Sometimes: Fugue State
by adrasteia82
Summary: Diagnosed with epilepsy, Sarah wonders if the seizures aren't seizures at all, but summons from a certain king. Dangers untold and hardships unnumbered plague Sarah as she begins to learn who she really is. She must choose-is happily-ever-after worth the destruction of an entire kingdom?
1. Chapter 1

It's always the same thing in the beginning of these fugues. I slip into the seizure like breathing, like inhaling. In the space of a blink I'm in the room, that cavernous chamber made of black stone. The consistency of polished lava rock, it glimmers darkly in the light from the single candle on the wooden table in the center of the room. In some visits, I catch a glimpse of a low, rounded-back throne far off at the end of the chamber.

The tall candle's flame flickers wildly in the drafty space. Nestled in a jar made of frosted ruby-red glass, it casts an entrancing glow that draws me forward. The dancing light makes me smile, makes me feel warm and loved. It invokes memory of the king's touch, and my body responds to those recollections. Leather against my skin, silk against my flesh, his lips kissing the bruises he inflicted and stealing away the ache.

But he's never touched me, not in this room, not like that. The memories are from some other life. My body and my soul know him, but my mind does not. Like sticking my tongue in the gaps from missing teeth, I can't help but explore that sensation. His name is on the tip of my tongue, as are the memories of our time together. But it's just out of reach, and the candle beckons me closer.

My modern clothing is gone, my jeans and t-shirt replaced by a long, gauzy gown that gathers beneath my breasts in a high waistline and trails the tops of my bare feet. Underneath, I'm naked. The dress shows my cleavage. If I move just right, the light cuts through the fabric and shows the silhouette of my legs.

The blood-red candlelight flickers and dances. I can't take my eyes off it. I stare until red spots dance behind my eyelids when I blink. I believe the candle is supposed to mesmerize me, to keep me entranced so I don't notice how the king enters the room, the seemingly doorless chamber.

With a sensation like the air being sucked out of the room, he is suddenly behind me. He's so close I can feel his body heat through my thin gown. I smell him, a captivating, subtle scent of night and amber, musk and vanilla.

I can't turn around. I know if I do, the spell will be broken. He'll vanish, and I'll be stuck in this dark, sealed chamber until whatever magic he used to summon me wears off. Because I'm in the broken moments between minutes, time is nothing here. I can be here for months, weeks, hours, and awaken in my present life from whatever seizure possessed me, only moments afterward. More than being alone in the dark space, I'm terrified of being without him. Perhaps it's a soul memory, but the loss of him is like the loss of self. I don't know how he is, but he's part of me. Has been a part of me since I was a child.

This is where the fugue state changes; sometimes he stays far away, at the edge of the circle of crimson light. Other times, he's so close I can smell the leather of his gloves, his clothing. Sometimes he doesn't say a word. He just touches me with gentle hands. Shoulders, arms, waist, hips…

Other times he talks. The conversations are always face-to-back. We speak of him, of me, of his magical realm and reign. We speak of our time together, the last time we were physically together. I can't remember it, but the story feels right deep inside. As if I was once his and I'd gone away, sometimes, he begs me to come back until I hear tears in his voice and he can barely speak around the knot in his throat.

And sometimes…sometimes, he pushes me forward to the table and leans me over it. He lifts my gown over my hips and strokes and smacks my sensitive skin until I cry out. He uses his fingers and his mouth on me and takes me to the very edge of control. When I'm laying across the table, gasping and crying, begging him to take me completely, he just whispers, _"Wait."_ I hear it in his voice that he wants me as much as I need him.

He takes me over the edge, and I plunge into an indescribable carnal rapture that leaves my knees rubbery and my breath caught in my throat. The fire he's stoked is nowhere near quelled. I grind against him as he strokes himself to release and comes on my back, growling my name.

Sometimes, he remains there, helping me stand upright and holding me close. Sometimes, he bids me close my eyes and turns me around, so I can bury my face against his shoulder and breathe in his familiar scent.

Sometimes, he's gone before his semen cools on my lower back.

I don't always come right back to myself. I can be stuck there until the magic wears off. I've watched double suns cross the sky and lavender moons gaze down at me from the skylights high in the stone ceiling. Usually, though, my king is merciful and releases me into my own world again.

Every time, I want him to keep me, to save me from this awful place of paychecks, rent and menial jobs for ungrateful employers. I want him to keep me close, to inebriate me with his cruelties and delights. He waits for me to say the words.

But I never can find my right words. I can always feel his disappoint and hear the sorrow in his voice when I fail. I come back to myself a little more broken.

So I search for the right words, words that will make a slave of a king, and queen of a dreamer.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Remember to Forget

Ear-piercing shrieks rang across the long, narrow playground and echoed over the dry, grassy fields surrounding the small daycare center. Most of the preschoolers were clustered around something on the ground, near the base of the huge old live oak tree at the far end of the enclosure. I paused, broom in hand, and wondered what they found so fascinating. None of the daycare workers sprawled across the stubby, bright-yellow kiddie chairs showed much interest.

I thought I heard a childish cry of "Spider!" Anything with more than four legs was a spider to the kids, though. Maybe one of the adults would run the kids off and show some mercy to whatever poor insect or arachnid the brats had in their clutches.

Nope.

I sighed and kept sweeping the screened-in infant play area. I did most of the cleaning at the daycare center, since my seizures kept me from being able to be alone with the kids. I helped out during the day, floating from class to class, and did whatever random tasks the director needed handled. I hated my job, but I needed the paycheck, and in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Florida, I had to take what I could get. No other business owners wanted to take a chance with me and my unpredictable seizures and the bizarre memory loss that always accompanied them. For hours, sometimes days, and sometimes permanently, I lost all memory of who I was, including everything about my life. I kept notebooks full of notes to myself to I could figure things out.

So I could remember the important things, and forget the frighteningly insistent memories that would surface. If I left them alone, they went away. The more of my current life I remembered, the more of that weird, second, surreal life I forgot. It wasn't real, anyway. Magical kings, labyrinths, and twenty-six hour days didn't exist. The doctors I used to see told me the seizures weren't physical, they were mental, products of some sort of mental fracture, and the visions and 'memories' were symptoms of an impending psychotic break.

I sighed, as I always did when I thought about their whack-job diagnosis. Psychotic break. Yay. Something to look forward to.

The kids' shrieks grew a little more excited. Finished with the porch, I headed to the patio to sweep away the clumps of black dirt the kids tracked between the grassy area and the back door.

A sudden, heart-stopping shriek of pain shattered the relative peace of the playground. The four teachers jumped to their feet and ran for the kids, me on their heels. We plowed through the clusters of kids, picking them up, pushing them aside, whatever it took to move them so we could get through. As one, the four women froze and drew back. One started flapping her hands wildly in front of her face and stamping her feet in some crazy heebie-jeebie jig.

"Get it, get it get it get it," Casey chanted, pointing at the bizarre insect clinging to shrieking Vita's little face. "Oh God, get it off her!"

I searched around for a stick, anything to try and flick the hand-sized thing off the kid's face. Roughly the shape of a dragonfly sans wings, it had a segmented tail with a stinger on it, vaguely scorpion-like. Long legs clung to Vita's face, and oversized mandibles clicked rapidly. Stunted wings fanned faster than I could see, buzzing angrily.

Out of ideas, I lunged forward and plucked it off the four-year-old's face. The legs wrapped around my wrist, prickly and tickling as it searched for purchase. The tail waved back and forth, the stinger twitching. An amber drop of venom gathered at the barbed tip and dripped to my wrist. Instantly, it began to burn my skin.

I swung my arm at the tree. The instant before I made contact, the stinger plunged into the back of my hand. Fire raced through the veins, all the way up to my elbow, lightening fast. I bit back a scream and slammed by hand against the tree, over and over and over again, until the insect was nothing but mush and hard bits of chitin and exoskeleton.

My vision blurred and bright streaks of light flickered through the green oak leaves. Faces moved in the rough, nubby tree bark. Sound warped and fluctuated.

No, not now, not in front of the other teachers and all the kids. But the weird, finger-like sensation spread through my mind, taking over, my only warning of an impending seizure. I scrubbed the bug sludge off on my jeans and staggered away, through the crowd of curious, frightened kids. Vienna danced and did her wild jig, flapping at her hair in an attempt to dislodge whatever bug she thought had invaded her extravagant curly weave. I saw her in double vision, her body swathed by brilliant red and orange and yellow auras.

I made it inside and tripped over a doormat. I caught myself on my hands and knees, but the impact knocked the world sideways. I couldn't see straight. Angles and corners were wrong, and straight lines pointed in the wrong directions. Colors changed hues subtly. Bathroom. Had to get to the bathroom. Someplace quiet and dark and still.

I made it, somehow. I clawed the marker out of my pocket. My constant companion, that fuchsia permanent marker.

_Sarah_, I scrawled on my arm. _Remember you forget._

Like inhaling, I slipped into the fugue state.

_Time to come home, Sarah._

_His voice wraps around me, deep and mellow. Somehow, I know he has been singing, and he has the sort of voice that would make a woman melt. His hands close around my shoulders. _

"_You have to figure out the right words soon, Sarah. Divided we fall. And we're falling."_

"_What words? Tell me and I'll say them." Clenching my eyes closed, I turn swiftly and slide my arms beneath his leather jacket and around his warm, solid chest. I bury my face in his shoulder. He's home, and I can't bear to be separated from him. _

_He makes a sound, a hopeless little half-sob. "It doesn't work that way. I can't do any more than I do now."_

"_How am I supposed to figure this out on my own?"_

"_You've done it before."_

_I want to look up at him, see who this man is that I love so fiercely. His last statement puzzles me. Not being able to read his face, see his eyes leaves me feeling handicapped somehow. His hands rub my back gently. His touch excites me on a primal level. I turn my face and kiss his neck. He wraps one hand in my hair. "Think, Sarah," he urges me. "Remember the last time we were together."_

"_I can't. I forget everything as soon as you send me back." _

_He kisses the top of my head, over and over again, and holds me tighter. "It's the magic. You've been out of the Underground for so long. Your mortal body can't handle it."_

"_You have to try. You have to remember. You have to find your guardian. He's our last resort."_

"_Who is he?"_

_He shrugs. "I don't know who yours is. He's someone close to you, someone you've known for as long as you can remember."_

_I shake my head against his shoulder. My hair rubs against his leather jacket and creates a gentle layer of static electricity. "I don't remember anyone. Every time I see you, I forget my entire life. I write myself notes every day, just to remember who I am. I don't remember anything from before I turned fifteen."_

"_I'm so sorry, precious thing. There has to be someone in your life, some constant. Look for him now, before you remember to forget again. He'll guide you back to me"_

_The back of my head tingles, the signal that his magic is wearing thin. I cling to him tighter. "Don't let me go."_

"_Find me," he says into my hair. I look up, unable to stop myself. I catch a glimpse of his eyes before I exhale and blow away the last of the magic._

Pounding on the door drew me back to full consciousness. My head buzzed and my muscles twitched and shuddered. Air stuck in my throat. I had to force my lungs to work.

The room I awoke in meant nothing to me. I lay between a cold porcelain toilet and a wall, curled into a C. One hand lay under my hip, the other arm bent behind my back. My legs were tangled together, painfully.

A woman outside the door yelled, her words muffled. She kept on with her incessant pounding. I pushed myself into an upright position and groaned aloud as the blood rushed back into my hands and my head. My forehead felt tender and puffy. I must have hit it when I fell. I managed to get up on the toilet. My knees felt too rubbery and my legs shook too badly to try and stand.

The woman outside wanted to know if I was okay. "Yeah," I croaked. I wasn't sure if she heard me, and I wasn't sure I cared. Why couldn't I remember anything? It freaked me out, not knowing my name, where I was, or what had happened.

Words scrawled on my arm caught my attention. I pushed my hair out of my eyes. _Sarah_.

A name? My name?

Below the name were the words _Remember you forget_.

Remember you forget.

I forget…

Tiny bits of information struggled through the thick wall of nothingness in my mind. Seizures. Crescent-shaped medallion.

A world that was real, but impossible.

A labyrinth of black stone and golden hedges. Castles, some real, some for decoration, some to distract both enemies and natives alike. I couldn't breathe suddenly, because I couldn't remember what was real and what were the products of my faulty brain.

The woman began to beat again, angrily. I rose and took the short step towards the door. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

The wrong woman stared back at me. Clear skin, sparkling chocolate-brown eyes, and hair the color of mahogony made the reflection that of a stranger. My hair was dull brown, so dark it was nearly black. My eyes seemed faded, and my skin was dry and splotchy. I blinked, and so did she. I touched my nose, and she touched hers.

Did I have hallucinations after the seizures? I told _him_ I had to write myself notes. I remembered that clearly.

The chick on the other side of the door wasn't letting up. She threatened to get the key to the door. Sighing, I leaned over the sink and splashed water in my face. When I straightened back up, a sense of relief flooded me. The reflection in the mirror was one that was inherently familiar. My usual stringy darker hair, the plain eyes, even the blemishes and flaws were there.

Odd, how I missed that other face. A tiny little part of me protested the loss. Memories crowded against the back of my mind, but try as I might, I couldn't grasp more than a glimpse of blue skies, pennants flying in the breeze, and the taste of spent magic on the back of my tongue like the last bite of sweet potato pie.

I opened the door and nearly got hammered in the face by the frenetic fist of the other woman. She gaped at me. "Holy shit, Sarah, you shouldn't have left the door unlocked. Geez, you could've cracked your head open or something."

"Sorry, I was a little distracted." I searched my mind for her name. I found a hundred other names, ones I knew didn't belong to anyone in this world, but not hers. Who was she? My boss? Beyond her, the bright blue walls cut through the dusky haze of the large classroom. The blinds were closed, and the light filtering through the closed blinds lent the room a surreal quality. Mobiles hung from the ceiling, created by little hands and huge imaginations.

A breeze blew through the room, stirring the planes, suns, and stars into flapping circles. I tasted it again, that nutmeg-like flavor in the back of my throat

"You are such a friggin' liability." The woman groaned.

Before I even realized what I was doing, I retorted, "And you are such a bitch." _Nice._ I couldn't even remember my name without it scrawled across my arm, and now I'd either called my boss a bitch, or started a fight with a coworker.

She narrowed her eyes. "The only reason I'm not kicking your crazy ass right now is because you're 'disabled'." She said the last word with enough venom to make her lip curl.

_What's said is said._ "I deeply appreciate your consideration," I muttered as I stepped around her and on into the large classroom. I worked in a daycare, apparently. _Worked_ being the operative word. "Where did I put my bag?"

"Find it yourself. After I get done talking to Cherise, you might as well not even come back. She'll fire you."

"My, aren't you mature?" I wanted to go home and sleep off the foggy feeling stealing over my thoughts. I hadn't the vaguest clue where 'home' was, though. This woman was of no help, albeit of my own doing. I had the feeling, though, she wouldn't have been much help anyway. I saw a blue bag on a shelf, a canvas affair with a unicorn on the front. Mine. I knew it.

_Find your constant. Do it now before you start to forget._

Before I start to forget…what?

Before I start to forget the taste of magic on the back of my tongue. Before I start to forget the castles and the labyrinth and before I start to forget the way the king's arms felt around me. Before I forget everything the king said.

How in the world would I search for my guide if I couldn't remember anything?

A thought struck me. If I forgot everything about myself right after the seizures, and I knew this previously, I would have written myself a note of some sort. Yes, I told the king I had to write myself notes. Outside, in the bright sunlight beaming down on the paved driveway of the daycare center, I plundered through my bag. A rumpled envelope with my name on it hung from a safety pin in the inside pocket. I plucked it free and took out the stained, tattered piece of paper.

_Call now. Unless you want to forget. 555-690-4509. _

I flipped the note over and found nothing but pencil marks and blotted lipstick. The half-sheet of notebook paper looked like it had been through some rough times. I needed to get home and find the other notes, and figure out what it was I was supposed to remember—or forget.

I dug through the purse until I found the wallet. A state ID card had my picture and my name. Sarah Williams. 84 and a 1/3 Henson Drive.

Not that I knew where Henson drive was.

Or where I was, for that matter.

After a moment of standing at the head of the driveway that led back to the daycare and staring at the tiny town blossoming maybe a quarter of a mile down the road. It looked like any small town in the country. Brick buildings mixed with wood-frame structures, bordered with sidewalks and separated by asphalt. It only seemed logical to head that way.

As I walked, I pulled a cell phone out of the bag and punched in the number on the note. After two rings, a pleasant-sounding woman answered. "Dr. Cadelio's office."

"Um." What did I say? _Hi, I'm Sarah Williams, I had a seizure and I don't know who I am anymore. Do you?_ Oh. Well, actually, what else _was_ there to say? "My name's Sarah Williams. I had a, um, seizure and I can't remember anything. I found this number—"

"Come on in as soon as you're ready," the woman said soothingly. "_If_ you're ready to."

"Why wouldn't I be? I don't come in every time this happens?"

"The doctor will talk to you whenever you make it in, dear. He'll tell you everything you need to know." She paused. "We truly hope you'll decide to come in this time."

"Wh-where are you?"

Why wouldn't I go see this doctor, whose number I'd carried around for so long?

She gave me the address and when I told her where I was, how to get to the office. Fortunately, it was at the other end of the short Main Street strip, right next to Mailene's Bookstore.

I thought about finding home first, and reading all the notes I thought perhaps I'd left myself. Maybe there was a reason the lady on the phone had sounded so eager for me to visit the office.

_Find your guide. Before you remember to forget._

I heard the king's voice in my head again. Did that mean I made myself forget?

_It's the magic. You've been out of the Underground for so long, your mortal body can't handle it._

Magic. Right. I laughed to myself and kicked a rock across the sidewalk. I was crazy. Had to be it.


	3. Chapter 3

2

I came to Henson Drive before I reached the doctor's office. I stood at the intersection and gazed down the wide, pleasant street. It curved around the first city block to a beautiful little park, and I could just make out the sign for a gated subdivision beyond the park.

Sparklies flitted and flashed in the trees and landscaped areas along the downtown stretch. I could have sworn I heard laughter on the breeze and saw the trees talking to one another through subtle mouths that formed in the grooves of bark or sway of branches. I stopped and watched narrow streamers of light chase one another like living shooting stars around the thin bole of a young crape myrtle.

I stood there staring for a minute, gape-mouthed and wondering if I should be alarmed. Maybe hallucinations were part of my problem, and it was nothing...to…worry….

One of the sparklies flew up into my face and hovered in midair. In the blur of light I made out arms, legs, a pointy, vaguely vulpine face dominated by huge dark eyes. Before I made out anything else, the blur of light enveloped the thing and it zipped away.

_Oh gods,_ I moaned mentally. Cracking up. That's all she wrote.

I hurried down the road, following street numbers until I made it to 1984 Henson. The house stopped me in my tracks. Nestled on a heavily wooded lot right across from the quaint little park, it stood in the shade of incredibly tall oak trees. For a moment, I thought banners waved from the tree boughs, but when I blinked, the metallic flickers were just bright green leaves catching the sunlight.

The house rose three stories above the ground. It was old, an original Victorian probably built during the architectural revival era that swept through the area in the 1920's, and well cared for despite a few unusual additions. The porch wrapped around the front of the house and disappeared around the right side. A tall, skinny staircase angled up the left side of the house to a door on the third floor, where another, smaller porch jutted out. Dozens of lawn decorations dotted the wide front yard. Everything from gnomes in pointed hats to gazing balls to multi-colored flamingoes stood in clusters and singly, guarding the walkways to the front porch.

Literally, guarding. I tasted magic in the back of my throat. I closed my eyes and the warding spells circled my mind. They recognized me and let me pass. I knelt in front of a beach-ball sized jewel-purple gazing ball and stared at my distorted reflection for a moment.

I gasped. Behind me fluttered half a dozen of those tiny flickering light-creatures. I turned around so quickly I fell on my behind. My wrist protested. I'd nearly forgotten about the injuries, but the slight impact of my hand on the paved walkway brought the pain raging back to life. I bit my bottom lip and held my arm against my ribs. My wrist throbbed, the heat centered around the swollen puncture wound.

The front door flew open so hard I heard it _thunk_ against the wall inside. The woman that burst out of the house and bounced down the front steps couldn't have been more than four feet tall. The dress she wore bagged off her slight body and nearly touched the sidewalk. It would have suited a woman a good two and a half feet taller and at least a hundred pounds heavier. And it looked so _old_, and definitely not in a trendy way.

She had the lithe movements of a dancer. With her pale green-blue skin and short blue-black hair, she completely commanded by attention. That internal part of me, that part that seemed to know things my conscious self didn't knew who she was and reacted with such warm feelings of relief and friendship that I couldn't help but smile.

She started to say something, but cocked her head and squinted. "You had a seizure, didn't you? Didn't you?"

I didn't even have time to nod before she danced around me, a blur of pastel skin and dowdy dark blue dress. She dropped to her knees next to me. "What do I look like?"

"Uh—"

"Come on, come on, Sarah. What do I look like?"

"Green. You're skin is green or blue, and—" I had to stop, had to regroup mentally. Humans weren't green. No human could look so much like an animated character come to life. The air around her sparkled as if saturated with ultra-fine glitter dust.

A frown lined her brow. "You remember, don't you? Who _you_ are? You always remember for a little while after you're summoned."

"I do?"

"It's your choice to forget. Once you remember everything-" She said that last bit so sadly. Big tears filled her eyes. "Sarah?"

Her name crashed into my head like a seagull at the beach. "Qlea!" My best friend. My companion in this world. Images surfaced, memories that I could actually reach. She and I standing on lavender sand, dancing out of the way of blue ocean waves. Another memory, she and I standing on a hill in full armor watching the army in the valley prepare to ride against us.

_They didn't know we were there. We hid in the trees and searched the enemy for that one familiar face. If we saw him, it would destroy my world, literally and figuratively. We were so close we could see the rank insignia on the officers' armor and hear the conversations between the knights standing guard. _

_Qlea held my hand. "He wouldn't come himself, Sarah_."

_Her words held little solace. "It's still his army. He's broken the truce_."_ I twisted the engagement ring on my finger. It was a silly tradition in the human world, one I'd insisted on. Sick to my stomach, I bit my bottom lip and tried to steel my warrior's heart against the impending betrayal. _

_On the far side of the encampment, his warriors filed into thick columns. _

"_He knows what is at stake," I murmured, gripping a slender branch so tightly the bark hurt my palm. "He knows, he knows."_

_Qlea slipped her thin arm around my waist. Her head barely reached my shoulders. "Sarah, we should go back. If we're caught—"_

"_He's to be my husband. He pledged his love to me. He won't hurt me." Tears ran down my face. I tasted them on my lips. _

"_Greed makes men do horrible things. He is so close to his goal. You may not know who he has become." She paused. "And it would save him a lot of trouble if you were spoils of war rather than a bride. He would be under no obligation to share the crown with you."_

"_He wouldn't do that." I didn't believe my own words, though. I hadn't been aware of how much I leaned on the branch I clutched. With no warning, it snapped and dumped me headfirst out of the cover of the woods. I tumbled down the steep hill, armor rattling and clanging as if goblin-forged. I rolled off the rocky crag near the base of the hill. After a freefall that took my breath away, I hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. _

_Curled up in the grass, I gasped for air desperately. A shadow fell over me. Even through the haze of pain and struggle for air, I knew who loomed over me even before large, hard hands gripped my shoulders and hauled me to my feet. _

"_What are you doing out here?" he demanded. He shook me, angry, but it was just the motion I needed to draw in a strong breath of sweet, cool air. _

"_What are _you_ doing out here?" I replied. I stepped back, hands on my hips. I hated the hot tears that rolled down my cheeks and the pain that dragged through my heart like a blade formed by the mountain tribes. "How could you?"_

_In the name of peace, I contemplated driving my dagger between the plates of his armor, right into his heart. I knew the weak spots; they were the same in mine. When we first met, he admired my armor so much I had a set made for him as a wedding gift. Unable to stand it, I'd given them to him two nights ago. Two nights ago, when he snuck into my chambers and whispered his love to me while his hands explored my body. _

_As if he knew my thoughts, he covered his heart with his big, gauntlet-covered hand. _

The memories coalesced into the dark of my closed eyelids. Qlea's voice calling my names intruded on the fleeting memory. My legs were wet; I'd spilled the water bottle.

"Did he?" I asked, breathless.

"What?"

"Did he march on Aleeathar?"

Her eyes lit up and she tackled me in a hug that knocked me against the back cushions of the couch. "You do remember!"

I pushed her away. "I need to know. Did he attack?"

"His name unlocks the binding. If you say his name, I can tell you everything."

"I don't know his name."

She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. "You have to talk to Cadelio."

"The doctor?"

Qlea giggled. "Yes, the 'doctor'. He's been waiting and waiting and waiting for you to remember."

"Why is it so important that I remember?"

"Because you're the only person who can save Aleathar. Our families, our friends, our entire existence waits for you to wake up."

The exhaustion spawned by the last hour of my life crept up on me like shadow goblins. Overcome by the desperation need for sleep, recovery, and some measure of sanity, I had to fight to suppress the urge to close my eyes and wish it all away. All the half-memories and sparklies and non-human best friends glamoured to look like old women would go back to the way they were an hour and ten minutes ago. I would be free.

But I could only go so far before the magic tether snapped me back.

I left her on the couch and wandered to my apartment upstairs. I lay down on my bed and gazed up at the complicated web of shiny beads, bits of polished metal, and many other tiny sparkling bits that swayed ever so gently high above my head where the two sides of the roof met. Two fans, an oscillating one and a box fan, whirred as they spread the cool air from an A/C window unit perched on a windowsill in the adjacent wall.

Even with all the fans and window units, the Florida heat permeated the room.

I had so many questions to ask Cadelio, the doctor who probably wasn't a real doctor. If he was from Aleeathar, then was he even human?

I held my hands up in front of my face. Was I even human?

An hour's nap did wonders. I dreamed of Aleeathar. Of the Underground.

When I awoke, I knew more of my identity—my real one. I'd been raised by Robert and Karen Williams, willing human foster parents of children from the Realm. My true parents were the rulers of Aleeathar. Under the constant threat of war from the neighboring kingdom of Draken, they sent me and my siblings into the human realm. I didn't know who I was until after fateful night the enemy king took my foster brother. Even while I traversed his labyrinth, I was only awakening to my natural state. I defeated him that day.

_My kingdom is great_. Those words rang in my head, spoken in my young, confident voice. Somehow, I knew. That book I loved so much was more than just a book, a story I loved. It was a guide to my history, my future.

_You have no power over me. _With me in his possession, he had leverage over my father. Over Aleeathar. _You have no power over me._

And he didn't. He never would, unless he stole it or I gave it to him. I saved my human foster brother and temporarily stunned a powerful king into weakness.

I wished, how I wished, I could remember his name. I loved him—I knew that like I knew my own name. I'd returned to Aleeathar again, after I destroyed his labyrinth. My father had judged me most worthy of the throne and passed his crown to me. The threat of the king of Draken increased exponentially. Our war became less political and more personal. _He wanted to possess me._ The memories swirled around in my head like angry birds, pecking and diving, but never striking me.

And from there, my memories grew hazy and weak. I recognized magic binding my memories into darkness, until I was strong enough to cope with their revelations.

How much stronger did I have to be? My love had betrayed me.

Or had he?

Qlea couldn't tell me, and I couldn't find a single memory past the point of my earlier revelation, in which the king held me up by the shoulders, just yards from his invasion force, and glared into my eyes. That hard gaze still haunted me.

I climbed off my bed and stretched while I looked around the studio apartment. Built up into the attic space, it took up the entire third story of the house. The gabled ceiling created interesting angles as well as suggested space separation: a dining area, a living room, the bedroom section. Along the far wall, I saw a sink, a stove, and a fair share of cabinet space. A butcher block style island sat in the middle of the large section of laminated flooring. Another section of laminated flooring protected the beautiful hardwood floor from a huge, old-fashioned bathtub large enough to hold two people, and I could see into a small room near the tub. Inside was a toilet, shadowed by the half-closed door.

Definitely a set-up for one person. I walked over to the bathtub and pulled back the shower curtain that surrounded the tub in an exaggerated arc on both sides. Nice. I'd have to make use of the tub later. I felt like a shower person, but the thought of a long, hot bath was very enticing. I sniffed the shampoo and conditioner and the body wash, hoping to stir some of the memories of my current life. Nothing.

I turned around and noticed the far wall was devoid of any of the art poster prints that adorned the other flat spaces. Rather, sheet after sheet after sheet of notebook paper hung from thumbtacks, strips of tape, nails, sticky-tack, and even earrings driven into the drywall.

My notes.

Some were written neatly and ordered carefully. Others were scribbled rapidly, overlapping, and in some cases seemed to be notes written on top of other notes. A vivid scrawl in fuchsia permanent marker caught my eye.

_Do you really want to feel that pain again? That agony? Do you want him to rip your heart out and crush it beneath his feet? NO! NO! NO! FORGET! You have to. Just forget it all. _

The message repeated itself randomly in the notes in various variations.

"Don't let it dissuade you," Qlea said softly from the door. I hadn't notice her come in. "Every cycle, we hope you'll come back to us. We need you."

I glanced over my shoulder at her, then back at the entire wall of my notes. I'd expected a notebook, index cards, something. Not this…

Art work decorated the white drywall in one spot. I touched the drawing of a castle surrounded by a huge town. Green hills and tall trees with silver-lavendar trees bordered the town. _Aleeathar_. Homesickness struck a low blow. My fingertips came away smudged with the pale blue pastel used to draw the castle. I saw this visage in my mind's eye. I tasted the breeze, scented with wildflowers and hearth fires. I moved papers aside and found Qlea's likeness, my own, and…his.

The sight of his face rendered in black Sharpie took my breath away. He affected me in a way I couldn't begin to describe. My heart ached, broken, shattered, and vaporized.

"_If you say his name,_" Qlea said earlier. His name would break the magic binding her to silence.

I must have remembered is name at some point. If the dates on the wall meant anything, I'd been having the seizures for years. Frantically, I snatched papers and cards off the wall. Combinations to locks, directions, notes about schedules for jobs I apparently had lost long ago, names and dates and bank account numbers all landed in a crumpled pile at my feet.

Nothing. No names. This wall was a shrine to my fake life. Very few things even made mention of my other life.

The dates puzzled me though. Some things dated back thirty years, in my handwriting.

"How long have we been away from Aleeathar?" I asked.

"A very long time. We've been here for nearly thirty years. I look like I'm in my 80's. Our glamors are strong, and they change our appearances slowly." That explained the droopy dress she wore. For a split second, I could see her as other people saw her: old, grandmotherly. Just the sweet-natured old woman in the huge house down the road.

Slowly, I finished plucking the notes off the wall. The Sharpie artwork I'd uncovered took my breath away. The king and I, arm in arm, standing atop some grassy green hill. I knew it was a fantasy, since neither of us seemed to be the pastoral type. I'd drawn his eyes to perfection, capturing the hard, intelligent look. We both wore armor, although mine was over a slim-fitting medieval-style dress of some white gauzy-looking material. I could have been mistaken, but it looked like he wore his over a pair of blue jeans. Was that the Metallica logo on the cuff of his black, short-sleeve t-shirt? I had to smile. We looked peaceful here. Why did I sense so much war between us? Had we ever been at peace with one another? Even when we were alone in the fugue state, in the black chamber, our bodies warred with one another. Maybe once…I recalled a white dress and a waltz. A peach, and a shattered mirror.

"Time is irrelevant in the Underground," a new voice said. Cultured and confident, this voice was so familiar to me. "Those of us powerful enough can step through into any timeline. Most of us are limited to the present and past of the human dimension, but a few very powerful mages have managed to enter the very future of the human race."

"So I've seen him in band t-shirt and jeans?"

Cadelio nodded his vulpine head. "He prefers modern clothing now to tunics and leggings. I can't say I blame him."

Despite looking like an anime fox-human anthromorph, Cadelio possessed a certain allure. His dark, human-like eyes glittered. His snout was short, his mouth nearly normal by human standards. His ears, his tail, and the lush red-gold coat made him stand out. He wore black slacks, immaculately tailored, and a white shirt that accentuated his lean build. His hands were normal, five-fingered, although covered by fine fur. He cocked one eyebrow and grinned rakishly.

"My dear Queen Sarah." He moved forward and took my hands. He kissed the back of each palm. "It is exceedingly wonderful to see you."

"Cadelio. I—" I didn't really know what to say. Much like recognizing Qlea, seeing him lit up some happy spark inside me. "Cadelio." There wasn't anything to say, really. I hugged him tight. My Vulpinor advisor, my most trusted friend besides Qlea.

"Have you decided to remember?" he asked, holding me at arms' length.

"I don't know. I don't know what it is that I've forgotten."

Qlea made a soft sound and crossed her thin arms across her chest. She leaned against the doorframe. I didn't like the look of sorrow on her face, or the tears that tracked down her cheeks.

Cadelio led me to the low sofa across the room. I sat and he knelt in front of me. He leaned forward and whispered a name in my ear.

"_Jareth."_

For the second time that day, the world shattered around me.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I hate author's notes. But as I said, I'm used to writing original fiction where the story unfolds as it goes, and there are no pre-created plots and characters and all that jazz, so I guess I should explain some of my motives due to some questions I'm getting. It's not so much a "Jareth and Sarah finally get together story" as it is an expansion of the Labyrinth's supernatural universe, and Sarah's adventure to find out who she truly is. Jareth isn't the fluffy, romantic, misunderstood King he gets made into in a lot of fanfiction. He's definitely dark and dangerous in my story, and he's got nefarious intentions for Sarah. To answer one question, NO, this story isn't about Jareth doing all the movie-stuff to possess Sarah, seduce Sarah, or marry her so they can live happily ever after in his chicken-infested palace overlooking the labyrinth. His schemes are more political and consuming than seducing a single woman because of something as trivial as love/lust. Sarah has something he wants, and he'll do what it takes to possess _that_.

Another note: Karen and Sarah's dad are non-characters. As is Toby, and probably some of her friends from the movie. They get mentioned, but I doubt any of them will actually make an appearance. But the story's young, so you never know.

3

"_Jareth."_

The name rang through my head like a gong. It possessed my body and my mind.

_Jareth._

Aleeathar stretched out before me. My militia, knights and peasants, nobles and mercenaries, men and woman, children and the elderly stood between the capitol city and Jareth's black-armor-clad knights and goblins.

Bound hand and foot, my mouth gagged, I sat before him on his massive stallion. I'd been stripped of my armor. The cool breeze turned frigid as the magic of the land realized what was happening, and that I, the mostly-mortal vessel, had been rendered helpless. I heard the keening of Aleeathar on the quiet breeze. Clad only in my thin chemise and the protective linen sleeves I wore on my arms and legs, I shivered from rage. I couldn't feel the cold, my anger was so great.

His hands gripped my waist tightly, possessively. He'd stolen his prize, and his pride knew no bounds. He rode high in his saddle, trading light insults with his second in command.

The commander of my army rode out and stopped yards away. Fear etched deep lines in Vincent's strong face. His eyes flicked to mine, full of questions and regrets. He'd tried to stop me from spying on Jareth's forces.

Jareth shoved me off the horse. With my hands behind my back and my legs tied together at knee and ankle, I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. The gag muffled my shriek of pain and shock. I drew my legs in quickly so his stamping horse wouldn't crush me. The bindings kept me from rising, so I was forced to lie in the dirt and stare helplessly as my people.

Without me, the Vessel of Aleeathar, they knew they had no chance against Jareth's army. I rubbed my face frantically against the dirt road, scoring my cheek against rocks and bits of glass and metal. The pain didn't matter. I had to get the gag off. Magic pushed at the back of my throat like a flock of angry birds of prey.

"I have your queen," Jareth roared. His voice echoed over the crowd and silenced the rustle of frightened conversation. "Surrender, and I'll spare your lives."

_Help me, help me,_ I pleaded to Aleeathar herself. _Sweet goddess, help me!_

The earth under my cheek hardened and the strip of leather caught on a little node of rock. The rock tore my cheek and the earth tasted my blood. A weak sacrifice, but Aleeathar would accept it. I moved my head again and the gag slipped off my mouth.

Magic exploded from me with my scream. Jareth's horse shied away, rearing. Caught by surprise, Jareth tumbled backwards and landed close to me. I summoned all my strength and used every bit of training I'd ever received to flip myself on to my back, knees bent beneath me, and then upright. Jareth tried to stand, by I threw myself at him. My head connected with his breastplate with enough force to split the thin skin there. Blood streaked his shiny black armor. He fell back to his behind and caught himself from falling backwards with his hands.

My people roared. They charged. Jareth's army roared back, and swarmed like ravaging demons, cutting through my people. I screamed as the pain of dozens rumbled through the echoing Aleeathar magic. Agony on a massive scale dulled the supernatural energy and it retreated, leaving us empty and defenseless outside of our physical being. I screamed again, pleading for it to reawaken.

I knew, though, it would be of no use. The pain was too much for it. Though Aleeathar was by no means the most peaceful kingdom and we'd invoked and suffered our fair share of war, conquest, failure, and victory, Aleeathar couldn't take the influx of pain from such innocents sacrificing their lives.

The main bulk of my army was miles away, awaiting an invasion from another direction. Though Qlea had undoubtedly raced to them, to warn them, to send them home, they would get here just in time to watch Jareth raise his flag from the spires of my castle.

I weighed my quarry down with magic. He glared at me. We were matched in magical strength, but on Aleeathar earth he was slightly weaker, as I would be on Draken ground.

"You promised," I growled.

"I lied."

"You'll regret this."

The screams of my people dying for their country permeated the air. The smell of their blood as it drained into the earth filled my nose. It evoked such a strong grind of helplessness, anger, and despair that I lost my grip on my magic. Jareth flipped me off his chest. I landed on my back, wrenching my shoulders horribly. He straddled my body.

"You're a fool, Sarah," he said as he tenderly swept the hair off my face and brushed the dirt and gravel from my skin. "A trusting, beautiful, strong fool. I won't mistreat you."

He kissed my forehead. My blood stained his lips. He tasted it and grinned, a dark wolfish smile. "I'll take you here, on your own land, and your magic will be mine. I'll succeed where my ancestors have failed."

"I'll destroy you first." Glaring at him, I dug my fingers and toes into the ground, making contact with tendrils extending from the ley lines. _Qlea, take the army to the mountains. Wait for me. Aleeathar City is lost._ I sensed her dismay, her primal scream echoing through the ancient magical lines.

He chuckled and rose. He hauled me to my feet. I went limp and he lost his grip on my upper arm. I thudded to the ground again. "Whatever, your highness." His gaze narrowed. "No. You're going to watch. I gave you and your people the chance to surrender peacefully. Your stubbornness did this."

He snatched me upright once more. My blood on his lips glowed bright red suddenly, just a flash of light and color. A sense of calmness eased through me. The flash had been a sign. I had just enough power within me, in my blood, to do one final thing for Aleeathar. Magic pushed at the back of my throat, growing slowly, pacing itself.

The battle didn't last long. In less than an hour, I watched my people cut down or taken prisoner. Jareth never left my side, even going as far as dragging me into battle to make me watch as he struck down my faithful warriors.

I swore I'd kill him. This monster who I'd once loved would die at my hands.

"Burn it," he ordered in the middle of the night. The last of my people had been purged from the town—I hoped. I'd rather them prisoner than burn to death in their hidey hole cellars or secret rooms. At least they would have chance to fight back when I organized a resistance, a coup. Crystal balls formed at his fingertips and he cast them toward my city. When they made contact, flames burst forth.

"Watch," he ordered me. He guided me to the middle of the road at the top of a hill known for its scenic view of the capitol city.

I couldn't have turned away if I wanted to. Flames licked up the simple homes on the outer edges of town. Hazy gray smoke filled the sky as the fire stormed towards the castle in the center of the town. As the flames spread, I fell into a hole of hopelessness and helplessness so deeply I could never crawl out of it alone. The grass around me died when I fell to my knees, my despair was so great.

"Why?" I gasped. I couldn't feel my arms or legs. My body was just a stalk holding me up. My heart, though, my heart hurt so badly the pain stretched behind me to the surrounding forest. Trees withered and died, fell to the forest floor. Death spread out, taking everything it touched. Jareth watched, fascinated.

"You invited me in. You practically handed me the one thing my entire line has strived to possess for as long as anyone can remember." He gazed out on the raging flames. "Everything I've ever done to you—for you—has been to capture this prize. I moved the stars and reordered time, just to capture this moment." They reflected in his eyes. I couldn't look away. "Aleeathar."

"What will you do to my family?"

He shrugged. "Put them somewhere, I supposed. Your father killed himself, rather than be taken."

The news sent another jab of agony through my tortured soul.

"I didn't want it that way," he said, his voice softer. "Despite our history, your father was kind to me. I would not have treated him maliciously, nor allowed it from my troops."

"What will you do with me?"

He sat down next to me. He seemed tired. The dead grass crunched under his weight. "You…Gods, I don't know yet."

"I won't be a good prisoner."

"I know."

"The second you untie me, I'll probably try to kill you."

"I figured."

"You should kill me now."

He snorted. "Whatever. You know I need you. We could do this like we planned. Get married, unite our magic."

"You just want Aleeathar's magic."

"Yes. But believe it or not, I want you too. It has been an endearing struggle, Sarah." He formed another crystal. I watched myself, my young, foolish, human self, meander through the crowded ballroom in search of the king. Nausea bubbled in my stomach. How stupid I'd been, falling for his glitter and lies, magic and song. He'd courted me through nightmare and daydream long before I knew who he was. Before I knew who _I _was.

How stupid…

I shook my head and watched my city burn. Even the hard, cold rage had fled. I was nothing. Empty.

Empty save for that solid push of magic waiting to be released. Aleeathar, what was left of her, awaited release. Her revenge would be for more brutal than any I could dream up and execute. _Kiss him._

I took a deep breath and turned toward him. In the glow of the fire and moon, he was beautiful. I felt pain again, heartbreak this time. "Untie me, Jareth," I asked softly. "I can't feel my hands. You know I'm no threat to you."

He obliged, cutting the ropes with his dagger. He remained tense, ready to strike if I moved. I allayed his fears and bent my knees to my chest. I worked at the knots in the ropes around my ankles until they, too, were free. "They won't ever trust you again," he commented. "Your people. They'll think you arranged this."

"No, they won't. They know me. I've never held myself above them. They know I would never hand them over to you."

"Even so. They'll blame you for letting me in."

He was right. I hung my head and let it rest on my knees. Damn, why did he have to be so beautiful? So many lay dead on the ground just half a mile away. Their blood soaked the earth and their souls demanded revenge.

And the only thoughts that got through the thick haze of shock and pain and exhaustion were about how handsome he looked. How, for a moment, he looked almost vulnerable. "I never wanted to hurt you," he murmured. "It's this…thing…inside me." He put his hand over his heart. "It's the souls and voices of my forefathers. They've waited for this moment for generations. For a while there, you shut them up. I could hear myself think."

Embers fell from the high-reaching flames, tiny orange dots fading into nothing on the wind. One or two caught in the trees of the sylphs' forest, and spots of red and yellow bloomed. The sylphs, the poor, dumb creatures, would swarm the flames, too stupid to flee. Their ignorant curiosity would be the death of them.

I cried into my knees. I was supposed to protect them. I'd been charged by the soul of Aleeathar herself to protect the lesser inhabitants of these fair lands along with everyone else.

I'd failed. No wonder Aleeathar's vengeance would deal with me, as well as Jareth. I'd failed so miserably.

"It's all your fault," he said. He sat on a boulder, a beloved landmark. His presence there was blasphemous, somehow. "You should have known better than to trust me."

I closed my eyes and listened to the angry voices of my dying people inside my head. They loaned me their fading magic, the last remnants of their power. As the Vessel of Aleeathar, and I had been ordained, created for this moment. Even growing up in the human realm, I'd been prepared for my role as protector with the constant influx of fantasy and myth. The powers that be wanted me to be able to believe in the unbelievable.

Their magic filled me slowly, trickling in from the four corners of the universe. Aleeathar seethed with rage, helpless for a few moments more. The smell of smoke and burning wood hung heavy in the air. Ash fell like snow. I caught a large, dark flake. It left a gray smear on my palm. Whose home had this been?

"Ah, there goes the castle…"

I looked up. Flames licked up the round walls of my whimsical tower. Moments, just breaths later, it crumbled with a low roar. The ground beneath me shook.

Priceless treasures, gone forever. Crown jewels worth more riches than I could imagine and sentimental objects, burned to nothing. Among the most precious items, a tiny red and white striped had and a hardback book bound in grainy red canvas. The last mementos of my mortal existence.

The jangling of armor and the tromp of horses' hooves announced someone's approach. One of Jareth's men, no doubt.

The sudden burst of light and smoke startled me as much as it did Jareth. We both hit our knees, coughing as the noxious fumes enveloped us. Someone grabbed me, but before I could put up a fight, cool hands tied a damp cloth over my mouth and nose, and Qlea hissed, _"Shh!" _

A rescue! Thank the gods.

Aleeathar grabbed my soul by the roots and gave it a firm shake. "Wait," I stammered

I used magic to clear the smoke from a narrow path from myself to where hunched gasping and trying to breathe through his shirt. He seemed surprised, alarmed even, when I dropped to my knees in front of him and grabbed double-handfuls of the front of his shirt. Bleary-eyed, he met my gaze.

I kissed him, deep, hard, and pushed all the magic Aleeathar had left into his traitorous body and soul. He tried to protest, but I held tight. There was no escape for him, not from Aleeathar's wrath. Wordless curses wound around his soul and mine alike. Damnation tugged at my essence. Magic snared my heart and tied it to his as intimately as if we'd completed our tumultuous courtship and consummated the damned union.

The earth shuddered, and Aleeathar's last gasp rattled through the land by way of a gust of wind so strong, it knocked me backwards. I didn't let go of Jareth's shirt.

I watch in awe as he _separated_ from himself. An unconscious twin fell atop my chest, and the other remained on his knees, eyes wide with something close to terror. He gripped his chest as if I'd stabbed him. A second later, his eyes rolled back in his head and drooped sideways to the boulder. I couldn't wrap my mind around what had just happened.

What had Aleeathar done?

My own sensibilities waned. Hands grabbed me and hauled me from beneath the second Jareth. The eyes of the double flutter open, and for a split second, in that dim, foggy light half lit by the flare of torches, the somber moon, and the distance flicker of flames, I see something I haven't seen since that cold night in the rain.

"Wait—" I said to my rescuers, reaching for the Jareth on the ground, but they'd caught me up in a net of reaching arms, grasping hands, and willing volunteers and dumped me into the back of a wagon. Hints of movement in the fog near the boulders revealed the other Jareth had recovered. He barreled through the fog, roaring, his face a shadowed effigy of neighed in fright, then surprise as whips cracked.

My head jerked and wrenched my neck as the wagon lurched forward. "Tyrulian war horses," Qlea murmured. "We'll be leagues away before he can find a single conscious knight."

The wind blew the stink of char and smoke over us. I sobbed helplessly, curled up in the corner of the wagon as it fairly flew along the road. No one spoke.

No one knew what to say.

Soon enough, I knew, the accusations would begin. Jareth was right. They would blame me, and rightfully so. I'd let my heart make my decisions, and I'd been the downfall of a great and beautiful nation.


	5. Chapter 5

4

_I wished it all away._

I woke up screaming, curled in a ball on the floor, pressed against the shrine to my humanity. Every death reverberated in my heart. Every scream of pain, scream for help, every sob of sorrow and anger and heartache shot through me like arrows. Qlea tried to touch me, but I knocked her hands away. Cadelio stared down at me.

Agony crashed over me, a suffocated ocean of pain. Hate. Rage. Swept up in the flood, I searched for the right words, the secret words to save me from this awful place.

I saw Jareth's eyes in the shadows under my couch. In the whirls of the dark, patterned tile over the stove. I saw him in the sparkles of smooth sea glass in the silent windmills dangling from the ceiling.

The mismatched, turbulent eyes damned me with their mocking gaze. I screamed and lashed out with my magic, obliterating the sparkly bits of glass. Jareth's jeering gloat showered down on me, pricking me like thousands of tiny, hot needles. They bored into my heart, each one screaming another accusation, another demand for my blood, for revenge for my trespasses.

I betrayed my people. They trusted me, and I destroyed them.

I howled and a mighty wind rushed through the third-floor space. Cadelio cried out. I couldn't fight the outpouring of soul-killing agony as it rushed through me.

This is why I forgot.

This is why I had to forget again.

I couldn't bear their deaths on my conscious, nor the crushing weight of Jareth's betrayal.

Cadelio knelt in front of me and held tight to my hands. "You can't run anymore. We need you."

Tears blurred my vision. Wordless sobs shook my entire body. Cadelio held me for a long moment, stroking my hair. "Ah, beautiful girl. You must listen."

I shook my head, smearing tears and snot and drool on his jacket. I cared nothing for dignity at that moment. "I killed them all."

"No. No. You must listen, your highness. They're waiting for you to return." His words were a careful whisper, full of hope that I would raise my head and respond.

"They should hate me."

"It is true you don't have many friends, but you do have an oppressed country full of those who would support you, should you choose to return."

Qlea dropped to her knees next to the fox-man. "There's even a prophecy about you."

"What?"

She giggled and clapped her hands. "We've worked hard to prepare Aleeathar for your return. The goddess still sleeps, but you can awaken her. You can return the magic to the land." She bowed her head. "The magic left the land that night."

"It's been horrible there, hasn't it?"

"Utterly devoid of magic," Cadelio said. "Those who were strong enough slipped through the realms and live here now. Others weren't so lucky, and they've had to live under Jareth's rule for the last fifty years."

"He's a cruel king, then?"

Cadelio extended a hand and helped me to my feet. "This is where things become complicated."

"How so?"

"The curse you placed on Jareth and yourself is unusual, and it will take a bit of work to remove. Time is short, and we must act now."

"Tell me about the curse."

"I only know what I've managed to glean from the few ancient texts we managed to save before Jareth destroyed the Libraries. You invoked an ancient magic that was supposed to force both of you into eternal sleep. Unfortunately, both of you are protected from the full effect of the curse, so the curse went for your weaknesses. Jareth's magic defenses cast out the weakest part of him and it manifested into what you might consider his 'good' twin. The dark Jareth sits on your throne now and holds the entire continent in thrall."

"What about me?"

He looked into my eyes. I saw such sadness in his warm brown gaze. "Jareth holds your twin hostage in the castle beyond the goblin city. The goddess separated from you, as his darkness separated from him."

If the good and evil split, that meant I was the evil twin? Weird. I didn't feel evil.

"How do I break the curse?" Should be easy, right? I spoke the curse into existence and cast it on us.

"Reunite the Jareths. Compel them to become one again."

I had a flicker of very naughty mental image of what that entailed. "Um, how?"

"You have to bring the strongest one to his knees. Weaken him to his most vulnerable. They'll be drawn back together."

"What about me?"

"I can't tell you. I'm not entirely sure. Once you are with your twin, you'll know instinctively.

We returned to my overstuffed couch. Qlea vanished into thin air and reappeared a moment later, skipping up the stairs with an armful of water bottles for us. Cadelio nodded his thanks. To me, he said, "You have to save Aleeathar. Vanquish the evil Jareth has set upon our fair country." Cadelio bit his bottom lip, frowning, as he searched for the right words. "You will never again sit upon the throne, but your name will be revered as Aleeathar's greatest hero, rather than the cause of her demise."

I swallowed back a hard, sharp sob. I deserved that. I deserved to be banished, my name stricken from existence. "Why hasn't anyone risen to defend Aleeathar? You said knights and warriors survived and went underground. No one has tried?"

"We have, and every attempt was met with failure. The magic that remains in Aleeathar has gone wild. It's unpredictable, unmanageable. The goddess sleeps, struck down by Jareth's mighty strikes. We need a Vessel to awaken her. Without you..."

"New Vessels can be born. Remember the Grele Era? The Vessel was killed, and a new Vessel was born soon after. She's continually reborn." The extent of that random bit of memory surprised me. Maybe everything really was still inside my head. I just needed the right prompts.

"No signs of a new Vessel or Consort have been found. Jareth destroyed all of the Libraries shortly after you disappeared."

That wasn't much of a surprise. No Consort had been identified in my lifetime in Aleeathar. The seers and archivists had searched since my birth for the Consort, the embodiment of Aleeathar's protector. The goddess served the land with her magic, blood and flesh, and the Consort had once served as the warrior, the defender of the weak and innocent. In generations, no man had stood as the Consort beyond his biological duty to create the next Vessel. The Vessels took it upon ourselves to defend Aleeathar. I loved the warrior role. I never felt comfortable in silks and lace and finery. Give me armor, give me a sword, pants instead of a dress, and I was content.

Because no sign of the Consort had been found during my youth, I'd taken on the role of warrior. I'd learned battle magic and elemental magic. One of the worries expressed during my reign had been the creation of the next Vessel. While the Consort was born of an ordinary pairing, the luck of the draw, as had the original consort's birth been, the Vessels, the girl-children, were born of another Vessel, a product of her union with the Consort.

It was a revered cycle, one that had never, ever been broken. As soon as the Consort is identified and both are of age, they join to create the next Vessel. Sometimes they remain together, their past souls strong in their new bodies, strong enough to recreate the bond that held the goddess and her Consort together. Other times, they mate because of the duty to their country, as my mother, the queen, and her generation's Consort, a simple farmer, had done.

Cadelio took my hands. "You only have a few hours left to decide, my dear. You've remembered so much, much more than you generally do. Even from her prison, the goddess has been calling you for so long."

"The goddess?" I frowned. "I thought it was Jareth."

Cadelio frowned. "What do you mean? When you fall into the trance, what do you see?"

"A dark room made of black stone. A candle in a red jar. Jareth is always behind me. In this last seizure, I finally saw him, just for a split second."

My friend rose and paced the room, one hand tucked behind his back and the other stroking the soft, short fur on his chin. "Jareth hasn't the power to summon you across time and space." I could see the question in his eyes. _Does he?_

Qlea spoke the one question that slipped into our minds, a dreadful, world-crushing thought neither Cadelio nor I dared voice.

"What if…what if Jareth is the Consort?"

Cadelio paused in front of the wall where I had drawn the remarkable image of Jareth and I. "It would explain the connection you two shared. And still share, apparently. But he's not of Aleeathar."

"Neither was the first Consort. Remember that one line in the epic poem you made me learn by heart when I was a child? _Foreign formed and chaos blessed/ the goddess and her chosen._"

He nodded, his back still to us. "It complicates things, doesn't it?"

"I still don't know what I'm supposed to do."

"Return to Aleeathar, awaken the goddess, and destroy Jareth."

Again, the peculiar knowledge that the man's destruction would be my destruction consumed me. I didn't voice my concerns, though. I nodded. "There's a lot I don't remember, Cadelio."

"I can fix that." He held out his hand. In the center of his palm rested a small glowing sphere the size of a ping-pong ball. "This will bring back all your memories."

I looked around my apartment. "And this life?"

Cadelio shrugged. "It means nothing. You maintained a quiet existence. There's nothing here for you."

"If I succeed, what awaits me in Aleeathar?"

"Your life. You'll be free to do whatever you wish." He smiled, a small expression that was a little sad. "You always wanted a cottage in the fae vale, by the Vlora River."

Indeed, I saw the very place he described. Lavender and silver grass, knee high, grew along the banks of a river that sparkled like diamonds. The cottage looked like one come to life straight from the pages of some fairytale. I _did_ want that.

In the deepest place of my heart, I knew something else I wanted.

_Jareth._

The quiet moments we'd shared had been sincere. There had been no lies, no pretention, no faux emotions. I was too empathic to not pick up on deception, especially as close as we'd gotten. Our courtship had been short and intense, but I'd seen who he truly was within. His capacity for cruelty lay close to the surface and was quick to show itself, but I understood he ruled a kingdom full of goblins and the lesser-civilized species of our Realm. I didn't fault him for being quick to anger, quick to discipline. Most of his subjects had the minds of rambunctious children, and they all carried deadly weapons. Worse than that, the dark magic of his ancestors claimed him and used him as a tool to exact their brutal revenge. He was possessed by the souls of those my family had defeated, time and again. Once, he'd told me the battle was not his, but theirs. He moved to their will when he was weak.

Beneath that, though, lay his heart. He said I made him strong, and he could fight the vengeful demons off for a while. When he was with me, it was like being wrapped in warm blankets on a cold night. Things balanced. I felt solid. I'd spent most of my youth balanced between the mortal human realm and our magical one, so I didn't fully know where I belonged, or which world wanted me the most. Jareth answered my questions with kisses and yielded resolve to my conundrums. I wanted to be where he was. He held the missing pieces of me. We both recognized that early. There had been no false modesty, no uncertain feelings between us. The moment we stopped fighting—or perhaps it had been during our first battle—we recognized one another on a primal level. I couldn't call what we felt 'love', but it was certainly powerful and consuming.

He was mine, and I was his. I would bow to him and he would worship me. He would be my slave and I would serve him forever.

Tears filled my eyes again. This time the loss was low, deep, like hunger pangs. As much as I mourned the loss of my kingdom, the death of so, so many faithful subjects, I mourned the loss of my Consort equally.

How could I stand so much pain? It hurt worse because the agonies conflicted. I hated Jareth for taking my kingdom. For lying to me, for breaking my heart. I wanted his death. I wanted his head on a pike at the city gates. I wanted to parade his body through his own damn labyrinth.

But I wanted him. I missed his touch. His smell. The way his hair felt in my hands when he worshiped me with his mouth. I missed _that_, the heights that he took me to. I missed his guttural utterance of my name, when my hands or my mouth brought him to the same rapture. We'd never had sex, and I felt like I would go mad longing for him, even as I sat on the couch with Cadelio and Qlea, fighting tears.

_That's_ why I wanted to forget.

I couldn't stand the thought of a life without him. If I couldn't remember him, then I wouldn't know I was missing anything.

_Say the right words._

He said that to me during our visitations in the fugue state. He pleaded with me to say them. What words, though? The words to forget him forever?

Or where there words to fix everything, to heal the rift in his soul, the destruction of my kingdom?

"The only way to fix things is to destroy him."

Cadelio nodded. He held my hand again. Qlea leaned her head against my shoulder, offering me her strength. "I don't know if I can," I admitted. "I feel like you're asking me to cut off my right arm."

"He's evil, Sarah," Qlea said. "If you don't kill him, you'll lose the few supporters you have left. He's done horrible things to those still loyal to Aleeathar." She swallowed hard. "He spent years hunting through every village for anyone loyal to you and put them to work in the mines or building his castle, or working his fields. The goblins had overrun Aleeathar, and you know the destruction they leave behind."

"Worst of all," Cadelio added. "He built his new castle atop the goddess' tomb." The goddess of Aleeathar was killed in battle, defending her country from an attack from the high king of Draken, one of Jareth's ancestors a hundred generations ago. Her physical body was buried in a sacred cavern. Aleeatharans revered the place, even though the cavern had been blocked off by cave-ins.

That struck a chord, both of horror because of his audacity, and fear, because to complete my task I would have to enter his domain. He would know if I was close, just as I could sense him.

"You'll remain human until Aleeathar is revived." He pressed the glowing sphere between both of his palms. When he drew his hands apart, a round medallion lay in his hand, a silver chain spiraled around it. He fastened it around my neck. "This is all that remains of your magic. Use it wisely. You'll need it on the journey. Once you've rejoined with the goddess's essence, you'll be able to return to your natural state of being."

"What if I like being human?"

They both looked at me like I was insane. Qlea made a puzzled, disgusted face. "You _like_ being sick and hurt and getting older so fast? This realm is horrid, with all the noise and pollution."

I shrugged. "I grew up in this world."

Cadelio stirred and shifted his weight. "Ladies, Sarah must make her decision very soon. We'll have time to discuss the merits and tragedies of being human later."

"What if I choose to forget?" I asked.

"The Aleeathar will darken forever. Countless lives that could have been saved will be lost. Jareth's dark forces grow stronger every day."

I rose and paced from the couch, agitated. "What makes you think I can defeat him? I've been here for so long that _this_ is familiar. Thinking of myself as a magic-wielding queen of some magical realm is foreign! It's like a shoe that doesn't fit." I shook my head and crossed my arms over my chest. I stood before the shrine to myself. The wall shivered. I blinked and the rippling stilled.

I had a man-fox and an elf in my apartment. Why wouldn't the walls ripple? Everything I'd thought impossible was suddenly, painfully possible.

More than possible, it was _real_.

Qlea gasped suddenly. I glanced over my shoulder. She was on her feet, pointing at the wall. Cadelio sprang to his feet, my name on his lips.

I sensed the movement of the wall. A single crystal separated from the drywall. Perfectly clear, I could see the warped lines of my drawing through the sphere. The lines blurred, merged, and formed the face of the man of my nightmares and my daydreams.

A searing wave of heat and darkness surrounded me as shadows fell. Blackness pierced my eyes and swept my off my feet. I screamed, but the shadows crammed down my throat and choked off the air. The floor vanished from beneath me. My feet pounded a futile cadence against nothingness.

I fell, a brick from a bridge, arms flailing, kicking, turning head over heels. Alice down the rabbit hole. Dorothy into the tornado.

The condemned into hell.


	6. Chapter 6

5

I woke up in darkness, so I kept my eyes closed. Naked beneath sheets made of something like silk. A heavy blanket weighed me down and protected me from cool gusts of air blowing over me rhythmically. I lay on my side, curled around a tangle of sheets, with my butt hanging out of the cocoon of covers, cold and bare.

Where ever I was, it was like an icebox! My head still whirled like I was falling. Colors flashed behind my closed eyelids. I tasted smelled magic (clove oil), but it had a faint burnt tinge to it. It wasn't familiar, but it wasn't _un_familiar either.

My head lay heavy on the pillows. My entire body seemed sluggish and leaden. I moved my leg, and it took forever. I huddled deeper into the warm covers, hugging the knot of sheets to my chest. Sleep beckoned, but something important gnawed at the corners of my mind.

_What did I need to remember?_

I opened my eyes a crack. I didn't know where I was, but my head was too foggy for me to feel alarmed. I caught a glimpse of my arm, the pale skin vivid against the dark red sheets.

_Your name is Sarah._

Not quite right.

A hand attached to a long, strong arm appeared in my field of vision. The pointer finger traced the name scrawled on my skin. Shadows formed and bunched as a man sat on the edge of the bed, close to the C-shaped curve of my lethargic body.

"Sarah," he drawled, his voice a low and sensual growl. "How long I've waited to have you in my bed."

A dull flutter of alarm wobbled in my belly. The man loomed over me, broad-shouldered, slim, and absolutely beautiful. I blinked hard to clear my blurred vision. I shouldn't be here. Shouldn't be with _him._

"I've missed you." He leaned down and kissed me. I couldn't make my lips work, to either return the kiss or close my mouth against the intrusion. He kissed me gently. It didn't hide the raw yearning I sensed behind his careful control. His lips trailed down my jaw, to the sensitive spot below my ear that sent a pleasant shiver down my spine. "By the gods, how I've missed you."

He gathered me up in his arms and held me against his bare chest. My legs rubbed against his blue jeans. My limbs flopped like half-cooked spaghetti. My mind started to awaken, though, and screams of alarm rattled through my mind. My voice came out a rusty squeak.

His name rolled around in my mind, and the reasoning behind my near-paralysis, my inability to talk, struck me. His name was the key to his magic. I didn't know why.

"Ja-r—" I groaned out. He kissed me, rendering me silent.

"Give me this moment, and I'll return the favor," he murmured. "I won't stand in the way of your foolish, futile quest this one time. Just give me this moment. I can only hold it for so long."

I moaned again. I wasn't exactly frightened, but my heart pounded and the fact that I couldn't move more than a few twitches left me feeling open and vulnerable.

"I'll break the spell, but you have to promise me this moment," he said, capturing my twitching head and framing my face with his big hands. _Oh goddess, those hands…_.What they could make a woman do!

"Promise me, precious."

The use of the private nickname spun ropes of shock through me. My fear vanished and my resolve to resist him crumpled. I hated myself for lacing my heavy arms around his neck and wrapping my legs around his waist, a thin layer of bedsheets separating us. I hated the stinging tears that gathered in my eyes and ran down my face. I hated it when he kissed them away, his cheeks damp with his own emotion. The weight eased from my arms and legs. I straightened my back and leaned into him. The fly of his jeans rubbed against my sensitive folds. He ground against me, leaning back against the headboard of the massive canopy bed. I bent my legs so I straddled his lap.

"Sarah," he gasped against my open, questing mouth. So frantic we were to touch, to join, we missed each other's mouths and made do with mapping jaws and throats with our lips. As if I hadn't been away, as if he hadn't destroyed my world, our hands roamed and stroked, grasped and caressed. He found my secrets and exploited them, until I surrendered with his name on my lips.

"_Jareth!"_

I hit the ground hard. Rocks and stones dug into my butt and dug gouges into my thighs. I bounced back and barely managed to catch myself on my elbows. Stone walls rose around me. Sky the color of brown sugar cast an odd light on the walls and turned my skin soft amber.

A shadow fell over my naked body. "Jareth."

"You won't succeed, Sarah." He dropped something on my stomach. I clutched the soft white cloth to my chest and sat up. Gone was the man desperate for my touch. The thief looming over me would reject the redemption I could offer, should I try. "Turn back." He crouched, elbows on his knees, hands dangling idly. "Before it's too late."

I shook my head, unable to take my eyes off of him.

"You don't understand," he said. He rose and stepped back, hands on his hips as he gazed down at me, lust in his eyes. My breathing quickened in response to that look, and my traitorous body dampened for his touch. Despite decades of separation, my response to him was like I'd never been away.

Like he'd never marched on my kingdom and burned it to the ground.

I closed my eyes and breathed deep, willing the part of me that desired him to disappear.

"When our souls separated, the strongest part of me remained. The strongest part of _you_, though, is locked away in a hidden chamber in Draken. All that's left of who you were is this weak shell. I could crush you right now."

Still on the ground, furious at his words, I remembered my conversation with Cadelio. _"So I'm the evil twin?"_

I held my head up and relaxed back on my elbows. I swished my hair back over my shoulders and gazed up at him without the slightest bit of fear. "Why don't you, then?"

He licked his bottom lip. He was turned on, as hot for me as I was for him. There was something between us that drew us together like magnets. However volatile our eventual meeting would be, we both needed it desperately. Our physical union would be the catalyst for—

I didn't know. I didn't think he knew, either.

He spoke, finally. "I believe this will be amusing. You won't make it out of this labyrinth, much less out of Aleeathar, through Draken, and into my former castle."

"Human or not, I will reclaim my kingdom." The rocks underneath me hurt, so I got up as gracefully as possible. The cloth he'd tossed me fell open. A dress, thin and short and nearly sheer. "How considerate, Jareth."

He smirked. "I've wanted to see you in that for decades."

I pulled it on over my head and flipped my hair out of the scooped neckline. The hem grazed my leg mid-thigh. In the light, I could make out the circles of my nipples and my pubic hair. The light cloth floated on my curves. The white didn't exactly flatter me. "It'd be better in red or something."

A blink later, a whiff of burned clove oil, and the garment was red, the color of arterial blood.

"I agree. Much better. You should get going, Sarah. You'll lose the light soon. This labyrinth isn't a place you want to be after dark."

I couldn't remember a labyrinth in Aleeathar. "You made this."

He nodded. "Modeled it after my own, although you won't find a bit of help here. It surrounds Aleeathar's capitol city and my new palace. What remained of your pitiful army needed to be deterred from their constant, futile attempts to dethrone me."

He was right, I discovered with a cold dousing of horror. I was so weak. I vividly recalled being able to shove him away. What instincts that remained seemed distant and foreign. How much of my abilities, of my personality, were remnants of the goddess?

Without warning he lunged forward and pushed me against the nearest wall. His hands captured my face and he kissed me hard, grinding his body against mine and driving me into the pitted, rough wall. He broke away, panting, his weight still against me, his erection digging into my hip. "You'll be mine," he promised before he bit my shoulder hard. His teeth pierced the skin, ripping and gouging. He wouldn't let go.

Being bitten registered right up there on my most dreaded ways to be injured. If I jerked away too fast, he would take a chunk right out of me—not that I could that, since he had me up against the wall. If I remained still, he'd keep biting until—

The excruciating pain triggered panic, and I slammed the hard part of my palm against his forehead, once, twice, three times, until he released me.

I managed to get my palm against his forehead and shoved him away. Blood stained his lips, and my mind flashed back to the moment on the hill when he kissed my split forehead. "A parting gift. Sort of. It will insure you'll need my help before long." He ran his tongue over the bloodstains and smiled, his eyes cold and hard, but deep as the ocean. He backed away from me.

He held his hand out, palm up, and closed his fingers dramatically. The smell of his magic surrounded me. He unfolded his fingers. I expected some symbol of his magic, a crystal ball or some sort of token.

Definitely not the modern cell phone that lay on his palm. Touchscreen, with all the bells and whistles. The fact that it was a Blackberry both startled and amused me. "I warn you, this will not be easy. You'll face enemies you've never seen before, and those you never expected to become enemies will turn on you. There will come a moment when the only way to save yourself is to call on me."

He put the cell phone down on the path at his feet.

I shook my head. "I can do this."

"You have no idea what you're up against." In the space of blink, I was alone. His voice echoed softly before fading completely. With his disappearance came instant relief from the almost painful draw of his presence. My body relaxed and I could finally draw in a full breath without going mad from the scent of his nearness. I sank to my knees and gingerly touched the bite mark on my shoulder.

Blood ran down my arm from the punctures left by his teeth. It pooled in the shallow dip of my collarbone and soaked my dress, darkening the fabric and making it stick to my skin. The wound itself burned with a deeper heat than I expected. The fire spread further through my chest, brightening and flickering.

He'd infected me. With what I didn't know, but the urge to be with him in every way possible burned like embers in my belly.

Was it magic, or just some trait of his? He was human in form and physicality, as I had once been, but appearances were deceiving. The governing magics of our lands changed us in subtle ways, into beings capable of surviving and reproducing and thriving. Aleetharan humans healed quickly, and possessed the abilities to sense moods and, in some, communicate telepathically. We had a deep kinship with the lesser magical beings, and with the land itself. I knew nothing of Drakenian humans. He'd tasted my blood twice. Did that mean something, or was it just some personal quirk?

I picked up the cell phone and skimmed a fingertip over the screen. The wallpaper was a picture of Jareth and I, the day I'd gone against the advice of my council, my father, my friends, and even the heart of the goddess herself, and announced the plans to wed Aleeathar's worst enemy. I wondered how he'd even gotten a photograph. He was so cocky and self-sure as he stood next to me before my court, the next best thing to a smirk on his face.

To my surprise, it had service. Five bars. Wow. I never got reception that good in the human realm, and I lived just miles from a tower.

More questions. They were unimportant, though. Right now, I needed to find my way out of the labyrinth and into Draken.

I had to do it alone. Even though Cadelio and Qlea never mentioned coming with me, I'd assumed they would. Gaps still existed in my memory, ones large enough to make me more than a little unsure of my step. I didn't know which way to even start my journey.

But I did have a cell phone, and a fairly new model Blackberry at that! I bit back a smile. The king of Draken, the king of nightmare and shadow, owned a Blackberry. I stopped trying to keep from smiling and let the giggles roll out. Laughing felt good, and for a moment, I felt like myself.

I guess I would have felt more like myself if I knew more about who I was. So much of my past was still shrouded in mystery and shadow.

I tapped the screen once more. I flipped through the apps until I found the GPS.

GPS in Aleeathar. Made me want to laugh again. Maybe Jareth had brought a few new, _good _things to my quaint, fairy-tale land. _Let's see if this works… _

I held my breath while the device 'thought'.

"Where would you like to go?" the phone asked.

Give it a shot… "Draken."

I was so tense I couldn't breathe.

"That's cheating," the wind softly growled in Jareth's voice.

A map appeared, with instructions to hit a certain button for step by step directions. I looked, up around. "You gave it to me."

I loaded the directions. A moment later, I was on my way. I forced Jareth out of my thoughts. I had more pressing things to deal with. The wind grew teeth and cut through the thin dress. I wrapped my arms around myself, all I could do to protect myself. The stone walkway was so cold it burned the soles of my feet. My shoulder burned and bled. Blood ran down my arm. I was leaving a trail. Anything, anybody, could follow it. After thinking for a moment, I ripped a section of my dress away and clamped it over the oozing wound. The pressure hurt bad enough to make me clamp down on my lower lip with my teeth.

I pushed on, following the computerized female voice coming from the phone.

Twists and turns and paths through gardens of dead trees, on through secret passages and holes in the stone walls, I trudged. The deep bite wound throbbed. Every so often a lightning bolt of agony flared through my arm and chest. The brown-sugar sky continued to darken. I worried about making it through before nightfall. If camping was something I'd done in either of my lives, I couldn't remember it.

Lulled by the quiet scuff of my bare feet on the stone and the utter stillness of Jareth's labyrinth, I settled into a light trance. Further and further apart, the phone's GPS announcements interrupted my reverie, redirecting me when I wandered off the approved path. It dawned on me, after I made a series of unguided turns around rounded walls and found myself in the middle of a bizarre dead-tree garden, that I hadn't heard a single direction from the device in a long time. I glanced down at it. My blood speckled the screen, dried and crusty.

The hopelessness of my situation settled in deeper. Without Cadelio or Qlea to tell me what to do, I would never figure this out on my own. Never. There was just too much, in a world too huge. Jareth himself was just too huge to fight. The dark powers inhabiting his soul were more powerful than even Cadelio anticipated, or so I believed. The blackness radiated off of him like rays from a dark sun.

Beyond the basics—find my twin, reunite, find his twin, reunite them—I had no idea what to do. It had to be more complicated than that. The world just couldn't fall back into place after those two little goals were achieved.

Which led me to more questions. _How_ could I achieve those goals? Cadelio said I had to bring him to his most vulnerable point and the two halves would be drawn back together. And then what?

A soft sound, an extra scuff of flesh against stone, drew me back to my miserable present. The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. Chills pebbled my skin. I sensed danger all the way to my core. The score of wide, tall trees in giant pots with three legs, all colored black in death, kept me from seeing anything. Limbless, they scratched at the sky with narrowed tips. I sidled a few steps to the left so I could see down the perfectly straight rows of massive, potted trees. From that angle, I could see straight down the rows as well as down the diagonal rows formed by the grid.

Nothing moved, but the impending sense of danger remained, heavy on my shoulders. With no threat in sight, I couldn't afford to stand around waiting to be attacked. That is, if anything _had_ ideas about attacking me. I wondered if there was even anything alive in the labyrinth. So far, I'd seen nothing but a few ant hills. Within a few steps, I couldn't see the brick walls; just lines and lines and lines of trees. It was dizzying, making me feel both claustrophobic and vulnerable. The pots supporting the trees seemed too small to hold such a huge burden. Though the rims were nearly eye-level, they looked small enough for me to wrap my arms around and touch the opposite hand's fingertips.

A shadow moved far down the nearest line of trees. I froze and pressed against the bole of a tree. I didn't see the movement again. I let myself breathe again and moved on, passing from tree to tree towards a break in the high, surrounding wall. Distantly, I heard a sound, like an exaggerated caw of a crow.

Something about the sound set my nerves on edge. Out here beneath the dead trees, I was too vulnerable.

As I got closer to the passage, I could see more opening, some with doors. Some were shut and locked with huge padlocks, others hanging open and exposing darkness beyond. The doors formed the wall, stretching left and right as far as I could see. I glanced down at the phone. The little hourglass icon flipped over and over and over again. It was about as helpful as a rock.

I neared the wall of doors. My arm cramped horribly. Electric jabs of pain shot from my fingertips to my shoulder. I bit back a sob and clutched the twitching, stiff arm to my chest. My fingers tightened into rheumatic claw. My own arm seemed foreign, nerveless. The radiating agony made it hard to breathe. I leaned up against one of the pots and sucked in long, deep breaths. The cramp wouldn't release!

I slid down the pot until I sat hunched on the cold, stone ground. What the hell had Jareth done to me? Blood ran freely down my chest and my back. It smeared on the pot and dribbled to the ground. Inky swirls traced through the bright red flow. That couldn't be good. I fought panic.

I wasn't human—not entirely, anyway. Maybe it would normal for me to bleed black.

But I knew it wasn't.

Little by little the worst of the pain eased, but I couldn't stretch my arm out. Another shuddering wave of panic pinned me against the pot.

_You remembered_, a tiny, sharp voice jabbed into my skull. _You were supposed to forget!_


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: An update, finally! The chapters will come a little faster from now on.

Black sap dripped from the dead trees and streaked my shoulders. I touched the sticky substance with tentative fingers. With a grimace, I scrubbed my fingers against the ground. Though I couldn't force my arm to cooperate, I'd managed to shake most of the depression threatening to consume me.

Jareth did this to me, so he could fix it.

All I had to do was wait for him to come to me.

He would. I knew it deep down inside. We orbited one another, never able to get far enough apart to break out of the other's gravitational field.

While I was waiting, I had to keep moving. Aleeathar wouldn't save herself.

I staggered to my feet and plodded onward. I set my sights on one door in particular. It wasn't so much a door as a stark rectangle cut out of the wall. No locks to deal with, no riddles or puzzles to hang me up. As I neared the last few rows of dead trees, the scuff of stealthy footsteps nearly hidden under the sound of my labored breathing became prominent, purposeful.

I froze and looked over my shoulder.

Something stood a few trees away. Stooped and cat-like, the being growled low in her throat. Hair matted into thick red-gold dreads fell around a face that held traces of familiar features. Deep scars shaped like claw-marks marred her sallow cheeks. She wore tattered clothing and clutched a dirty spear in her hands.

Another sound alerted me to another presence. To my left, another one of the creatures stepped out of the shadows. She wasn't as hunched and twisted as the other creature. She appeared more human. Sad eyes bore into mine. _Familiar_ eyes. One her shoulders dipped lower than the other, and the arm on the side hung limply at her side. In her other hand, she clutched a doubled-over strip of leather with a small pouch in the middle. A slingshot?

Yet another creature slipped out of the shadows, this one bent nearly double. She galloped around me, yipping and yelping wildly. If her intent was to drive me towards the wall of doors, she succeeded. I stepped into the wide path between the trees and the wall, and all three rushed me, yowling and brandishing their weapons. With a spear at my heart, a dagger at my throat, and the tallest one whirling the sling over her head, I dared not move. My breath stuck in my throat. Lungs felt like stone. My gut trembled.

The longer the women-creatures stood staring at me, the angrier the spear-wielding one became. The wicked, dirty spearhead trembled from her barely-restrained anger. She slashed it at my face, so close I felt the chill from the metal, the hiss of it slicing through the air.

The point of the spear traveled from the tip of my nose down my throat, over my heart to the center of my chest between my breasts. The sharp edge dug into my skin, drawing a bead of blood that dripped warm and wet down my belly before it soaked into my filthy dress.

"Varket myo _shithe!_" the thing growled, her voice rough and scratchy.

The meaning of the words trickled into my head, dropping out of the foggy ether of half-memories. _Prepare to die, traitor._

I sucked in a pained breath and clenched my eyes shut.

To my surprise the spear dropped away. I cracked my eyes open as the deformed women scuttled backwards, their attention on a figure emerging from the shadows of the garden of dead trees. Unlike the others, this woman walked tall, her shoulders and back straight. As she drew closer, I saw her deformations were not as severe. Her skin looked thin and wrinkling, like a paper bag wadded up and flattened out far too many times. She walked with a limp that the motions of her long, loose skirt turned into an almost graceful swaying gait. She clutched the knobbed head of a walking stick in one arthritic hand. She had something else in her other hand, but I couldn't make it out.

The other women made a path between them so she could approach me. My height, her big, cat-like eyes peered right into mine, then scanned up and down my body. She waved her hand in front of my face and muttered a few words.

A second-long flicker of dizziness made me wobble on my feet and blink hard. She'd taken the glamour away, the one I hadn't thought about since Qlea told me of it. The other women-creatures hissed and grumbled, their complaints sounding like the rumbles of angry cats.

With grace and strength belied by her stooped posture and twisted limbs, the first woman-creature I'd seen flung her spear at me effortlessly. Driven by force I couldn't imagine, it sank into the wall so close to my head it nicked my ear.

No retreat, no weapon, I had nothing. Absolutely helpless, I pressed back against the wall as hard as I could. I stayed as strong as possible in the face of this threat.

The creatures murmured among themselves as they advanced on me, one scuffing step at a time. The language struck a familiar chord in my heart, a tangible twang of nostalgia. I squinted at the hunched, contorted creatures edging closer.

Matted blue feather earrings hung from the spear-bearer's ears. _Tomi._

Red tattoos spiraled up another's arm, distorted by crinkled, dry skin. _Skal_.

The other was Rahj, and the one that stood tall in the midst of them bore the name Virin.

Memories surfaced. The six of them guarded the sacred tomb of the goddess of Aleeathar. A fire crackled merrily near the entrance, and the pretty priestesses and their female consorts clustered around it, gossiping and cooking the evening meal. Nighttime, bright with stars and the double moons cloaked us as Virin, the high priestess of Aleeather, tried to read the stars for me.

She found no answers. Puzzled, she laughed and joked, "_You have no future in Aleeather. The stars don't lie, even when they won't talk._"

"Virin." The name escaped my lips. It had the effect of a shotgun blast. The women stumbled backwards, then surged forward, weapons at the ready.

Virin flung out her hands. They froze in place, teeth bared. Low growls rolled from their throats. The hatred radiating off of the women was palpable. Chills raced up and down my spine.

"_Krith,"_ Virin snarled.

The translation popped into my head, dropping out of the ether of my lost mind. _Run._

"Virin—" She'd been in my friend in my past life. Surely she'd be my ally now.

She lashed out, slashing her clawed hand across my face. _"Krith!_" she howled. My blood beaded up on her claws. I didn't need any further urging. A stone slung from the sling Skal carried slammed into the wall where my head had been. I launched myself forward, toward the door.

They chased me, yowling like enraged animals. I veered into the darkened doorway at a full-on sprint, legs pumping through the pervasive ache deep in my joints. Every step sent another jolt of agony through my clenched arm and chewed-up shoulder. I ignored the pain and pushed myself faster.

Fear-blinded, I realized I'd launched myself into empty space.

In dreams, I always fell in slow motion, with enough time to look around, to see the rushing ground, to feel the air buffeting my body.

Not so in this questionable reality. I had enough time for terror to shuttle through my body with lightening speed, enough time to grab at the magic bubbling in my throat and wordlessly wish to survive the fall. The stairs rushed up to greet me as I plummeted to my fate.

I slammed into the ground with enough force to knock myself out. Drifting in nothingness, I was barely aware of cold dirt beneath my cheek. A vivid kaleidoscope of color and pain swirled around me. My fragmented consciousness waxed and waned, drawing closer and spreading thinner. My eyes were open. Dense, bare tree limbs formed a mesh overhead. The rough bark sparkled like it had been sprinkled with sugar. Tiny flashes of light sparked and burned in my peripheral vision. I tasted copper. Vision in my left eye seemed blurry.

I didn't hurt yet, but the pressure of the impending agony lay heavy over me. Somewhere in the periphery, I saw ball gowns swish by, all a-sparkle with diamonds and fairy glamour. Strains of music tinged like a jewelry box. I wanted to hum along, but I couldn't breathe.

Tiny bursts of pain broke through that wonderful numbness. My ribs had a strange, crunchy feeling, and a hot, metallic liquid thickness bubbled in the back of my throat.

Pulling air into my lungs was more than I could manage.

I sat up. I don't know how, or even when, but one moment, I was on my back staring up, and the next I faced the tree trunks. A wave of dizziness nearly laid me out again, but somehow, I stayed upright. A second later, I vomited a frightening amount of blood into my lap.

A dull, dark reflection caught my eye. I don't know how long I stared at the phone, my vision lopsided like my eyes had been knocked sideways, blurry on my left side as if looking through a wet windshield. Making my heavy, reluctant hand move toward the phone took an even longer stretch of time. I touched it, the sensation faint and far away.

The order to 'close' took forever to reach my fingers. Even then, it got all distorted. I grabbed dirt and leaves and air until by some lucky chance I got my numb fingers around the phone. I couldn't see…I rubbed my thumb across the smooth screen. It lit up and pulsed once.

Couldn't see what flashed across the screen.

Hot blood poured out of my mouth in a thick, foul stream. Flaming barbs of pain tightened in my chest. Fuzzy darkness closed around me once more.

"Stupid girl." The voice I love, the voice I _hated_, growled low in my ear. Arms scooped me up. The jostling of my injuries zapped me to full consciousness. My stomach felt full and hard, and the sensation of drowning had me on the verge of panic. Jareth jostled me again and the movement forced another belly full of viscous, hot blood up.

"Disgusting, Sarah," he groaned, straining his neck so he could see the thick red mess running down his shoulder. "You really did a number on yourself this time. How the hell did you wish yourself across the labyrinth?"

I floated in and out of the tangles of pain and unconsciousness. He carried me away, his every step thudding through my body. The haze in my head thickened. Nothing cut through the fog. I slipped further away, deeper into the warm ether of nothingness. Content to be in his arms, I drifted away.

"No, none of that now. Open your eyes. Wake up. You're not too far gone yet." He slapped my cheek gently, hard enough to draw me back a measure.

I forced my eyes open a crack. He was beautiful, all jagged lines and dark shadows. Blazing eyes and brilliant lies. With his arm behind my shoulders, he helped me sit upright in the big bed. Through the fog of impending death, I realized we were back in the palatial bedroom once more.

"Stupid human," he grumbled. "You're too frail like this. One little tumble and you're dying." He sighed. "What would you have done if I didn't have my cell phone on me when you called?" He moved and I couldn't keep track of his hands. Something cool touched my lips. Water. I managed a weak swallow.

He laid me back on the pillows. "You're getting blood all over my bed…" he grumbled. "I assume you want me to help you, right?"

Things got fuzzy and distant for a while. Slowly, I came back from the soft, quiet place I'd drifted. Jareth leaned against one of the solid posts at the foot of the bed. The worst of the pain was gone from my body, although the heaviness remained in my chest. My throat burned. My headache eased somewhat.

And I was naked again, cold and shivering. Jareth drew the blanket over me. Grateful for the warmth, I closed my eyes and relaxed against the pillows. I sensed no threat from Jareth.

I never truly did. He loomed at the foot of the bed, larger than life, wanting—

I didn't know.

After a moment he sat down on the side of the bed. His weight made my hip dip towards him a bit. "I could have left you to die," he said, not looking at me. "Would have made my life lot easier if I had. With you dead, most of my problems would be gone."

"Why'd you save me, then?"

He shifted sideways, turning towards me slightly. His hand caressed my hip, an almost unconscious stroke. "I need you. It's as simple and as complicated as that."

"Why'd you bite me?" I felt a little stronger, physically, but being so close to him left me breathless and woozy. I wanted nothing more than to feel him next to me, holding me until all the hurts and aches went away.

He chuckled softly and grinned. "Leverage."

"What?"

He traced a line up my arm. "Every hour, the poison creeps deeper into your cells. It changes them and then it kills them, slowly. Painfully. You feel it, don't you?"

I could, a deep burn in the center of my right arm and shoulder. It had moved up my neck a little ways, and down my ribs.

Jareth touched my cheek. "It'll wither your muscles and weaken your bones. Your skin will turn as thin and frail as old parchment. Your hair will fall out." He picked up a strand of my hair and let it trail through his fingers. "In a few days, the fever will burn out your mind, and you'll be just a dried up husk."

Though I hungered for his touch, I drew back, horror picking through my mind. In the few short hours since he'd bitten me, the aching burn in my arm only eased when I held it tight against my ribs. As he sat over me and watched with a smirk on his face, I tried to extend my arm. To my absolute terror, I could barely move it away from my chest without excruciating pain ripping through my chest and shoulder.

"Why would you poison me?"

"To make you need me. I'm the only one who can save you. Otherwise, you'll die a miserable, lonely death."

I turned away so he couldn't see me cry. He wouldn't allow me the dignity to suffer in peace. Instead, he watched me, his eyes blazing.

"I can save you, Sarah. Let me." Old words echoed from the depths of my mind. _Fear me, love me, and I will be your slave._

It would require surrender, and that I would not, could not, give him.

"I'm prepared to compromise," he said, his voice a low drawl that cut through my hate and grief like a knife made of pure lust. "I know better than to ask for what you wouldn't freely give."

"I don't have anything to give you," I said.

He smirked. "You do, Sarah. You have the only thing I've ever wanted." He moved quickly, straddling my body and leaning down to kiss me deeply, pulling at my heart and soul with his lips. Only his lips touched me. He kissed a searing path down my jaw, to my collarbone, where he skirted the wounded area on my shoulder. His hot, damp lips found one of my nipples and he bit down, hard enough to hurt. I cried out and he sucked the pain away. My other nipple was worshipped in the same way, with pain and pleasure, and his body dipped lower until he ground his pelvis against mine.

He bit me again, suddenly, on my inner arm. I couldn't move fast enough to escape his hands. "Stop fighting me," he growled. His tasted my blood again, lapping the slow ooze away. "I could take you places, SArah. Higher than you've ever been. You and I are meant to be. My darkness is your darkness. How you turn my world, you precious thing." He kissed me. I tasted my blood on his tongue. "Your own stupid mythology casts us together, as Consort and Vessel."

His fingers dipped into my hot center, stroking me higher and higher, closer to rapture. Deftly, I worked the button and the fly of his jeans open and slipped my hand into his pants. His thick, engorged cock filled my hand, jumping when I closed my fingers around his shaft. He grunted and pressed against my hip.

"You're killing me," I whispered between moans, my breath hot against his ear. I spoke of his fingers moving deep inside me, and of the persistent agony of his bite. Our hands moved together, seeking release, until I clenched my thighs around his hand and dropped mindlessly into the promised rapture. The threat of changing our world irrevocably kept our bodies from fully joining, even though he urged me to roll over and settled against me, hot and heavy and hard, and used the friction of our bodies and his own hard to bring about his own release. He tensed, every muscle in his body convulsing once, and he ground out my name through clenched teeth as his seed spurted across my lower back.

After a long moment he relaxed and eased down on his side. He gathered me close, looping his arm around my chest. "I only want one thing from you," he said. "But I don't need it."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. My body still throbbed and my mind hummed from the intense orgasm. I just wanted to stay still and silent, warm and safe in this place between time and realities.

"I want your heart." His fingers stroked the side of my breast. For once, the deep burn in my arm and right side abated.

We weren't enemies here. We were just…together. "I offered it to you. You chose to steal my kingdom instead." Hot tears of regret, anger, and helplessness stemming from the event decades past filled my eyes, filmed my vision. I rolled over and put my hand against his stubble-roughened cheek. My right arm cramped painfully. I pressed it against my ribs. "I offered you everything I possessed, and would have given it freely. Don't you see that, Jareth?"

The emotions in his eyes ran deep. He brushed the tears of my cheeks. "You can't possibly understand."

"Try me."

He shrugged and rolled over on his back. He squirmed around until he was comfortable, adjusting his limp cock and rezipping the fly of his pants. With both hands splayed across the finely-sculpted muscles of his stomach, he sighed. Unable to keep my hands off, I traced the ridges and valleys of his torso. "What secrets have you kept hidden from me?" I asked before I ran my tongue over one of his nipples. He grunted softly and pushed me away. "Why are you so different here?"

"This place exists for me and you alone. The parts of me that desire to destroy you can't be in this place. Here, you only have the real me."

I ran my hand up his stomach and fingered the sparse hair on his chest. He was so beautiful, it hurt. So perfect, I couldn't stand it. "Tell me your secrets, Jareth. Make me hate you again. I can't stand not hating you."

He laughed. "Why? Wouldn't it make it easier?"

"I don't want to love you. I hate needing you. I hate it because of what you did, and what you want to do, and what you will do to me."

He gathered me into his arms and I buried my face in his strong shoulder. This man should have been my king. We should have been standing together in the shining castle of Aleeather, gazing over our joined lands, which should have been beacons of justice and prosperity and strength.

I bit his shoulder, just enough to hurt. He yelped and jerked away. Naked, powerful, and angry, I pushed him down to the mattress and threw my leg across his waist. Straddling him, I stared down into his glittering, dark eyes. I wondered who actually had the power at the moment when his smoldering eyes raked from my face to my breasts and downward. His cock hardened in his jeans, between my legs. My heat soaked into him.

It would be so simple, just a few quick movements, a single thrust of his cock, and we could complete what we'd started so long ago. In just a thrust, our destinies would be sealed.

Magic hummed between us, hot and powerful, urging us to come together. A heady, intoxicating sensation fell over us, and I wondered if the starry, dazed look in his eyes was mirrored in my own. Jareth's hand slipped between us, caressing me as he urged me to move so he could unzip his pants.

I had to touch him. Had to kiss him, had to inhale the mingled scent of his magic and his flesh. I pushed his pants down and he kicked them off, and finally he was as naked as I, as bare as the night and as mesmerizing as the depthless sky.

Jareth sat up and pushed me down. Poised over me, he kissed me deeply and his fingers slid through my damp folds and invaded me. "All your years in the human realm, and no one has ever touched you?"

I arched against his touch, seeking his mouth and wringing more kisses from him. "No, never. There's only been you. I couldn't bear the touch of another man." He sent me to the stars with the soft strumming of his thumb against my clit.

I crashed back to earth, gasping for air and fighting the urge to grab his hips, drive him into me, and wrap my legs around his waist. I'd hold him there forever and never let him go.

He was so close, the tip of his cock nudging the hot core of me. He held himself back, biting his bottom lip, one hand holding my hips down to keep me from rising to meet him. "Sarah…"

The tone of his voice was tortured and shaky. "Yes?" I reached between us and gripped his cock, pumping him with firm strokes until he shivered and pushed inside me until it hurt, just until it hurt. His hand held me down and I tossed my head back and groaned with the need to damn the pain and draw him into me.

Energy swarmed around the point where our flesh joined, fiery and static, all but screaming for us to complete the ritual. But Jareth held back, eyes clenched shut.

I saw fear etched in his face. It tempered my lust and I didn't fight him when he drew back and bounced off the bed. Empty, needing him, I cried out.

"We can't," he ground out. "Gods, I need you so bad. It hurts every fiber of my being, I need you so badly, but now's not the right time, and—Even I can't control the power our joining will release."

He gripped his cock and stroked himself, eyes still clenched shut. I saw the muscle flex, and it sparked another searing wave of desire.

"Jareth," I murmured, rising and touching his waist. I knelt, my hands trailing down his hips, and pulled his big hands from his cock. He laced his fingers through my hair and guided my mouth to his turgid member. I took him between my lips and he groaned loudly, thrusting his hips toward my face. His musky scent and salty taste became my world. His cock pulsed, hardened even further. He growled my name, a gruff litany, and thrust deeper into my mouth. I fought the urge to gag as his seed burst against the back of my throat. He held me tight, my throat clenching around his cock, my jaw aching from his girth, and barely able to breath, but I welcomed the discomfort because I sensed it was a goodbye, a preamble to a separation from his presence, a dismissal from this sweet place where we weren't enemies. Tears ran down my cheeks.

I didn't want to leave him.

He let me go and untangled his fingers from my hair. He dropped to his knees and framed my face in his hands. The look on his face frightened me, just as much as it broke my heart. "You will be my wife and my queen, Sarah."

I shook my head. I couldn't. If he only knew what I must do to free my country, to save my people. They would cast me out, afterwards, but I would be redeemed.

And alone.

So, so alone.

He was my consort, and at some point in the near future, I would have to kill him. The knowledge beat around my brain like frantic birds, echoing and screaming.

I closed my eyes and my tears dripped down his hands. In the space of a blink, he was gone. The taste of him remained on my tongue, and the burn of his hands glowed on my skin.

The door to the room opened into nothingness. I closed it quickly and paced the perimeter, peeking out the windows and searching for a way out. He said the room was a special place, one he'd created for us alone. Frustrated, I plopped down on the rumpled bed. I had no control here. Leaving would be impossible, until the magic wore off.

An indeterminate amount of time passed. The ache in my arm returned with a vengeance and crawled down my ribs, up my neck. The chill in the room increased. I wrapped up in a blanket. I closed my eyes for a moment, and only dimly realized I was falling asleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Dragging, ripping pain forced me to full consciousness. The sparkly, leafless trees waved and shivered above me in an intangible breeze. No…after a moment, I realized the trees themselves were moving, touching, caressing one another. I rolled over on my side and curled up tight, willing away the pain.

It didn't work. I hurt, badly. My skin itched and crawled, and I could feel the moisture wicking away, the poison spreading, cell by cell by cell. My left arm pressed against my rib, gripped by what seemed an eternal cramp. The skin clung to the withered flesh, and dark veins had begun to appear beneath the dry, frail skin. It sickened me to see my own atrophied arm. Patches of scabby, crusty skin mottled the ivory-yellow shade my skin had taken on. I lay where I'd fallen, the cracked phone close to my hand. I still wore the ragged, blood-encrusted scarlet dress. Had that bizarre interlude with Jareth just been a dream?

Footsteps tromped through dry grass, still a distance away, but close enough to startle me. I feared another violent reaction to my return, like the one I'd seen with the priestesses. I grabbed the phone and crawled into the deep V of the roots of the nearest tree and waited.

Long moments later, a man trudged into sight drawing a two-wheeled handcart behind him. Laden with battered wooden furniture, it sank into the soft ground and made the man's going all the more difficult. One of the big wheels caught in a depression in the ground. He lost his grip on the long handles and dropped to his knees just a few feet from me. He saw me and started, obviously surprised to see someone hiding in the dark of the forest.

"Are ye hurt?" he asked. "Lady?"

"Sick," I replied. I sounded the part. My voice cracked and splintered.

"Where are ye headed?"

"Out of the labyrinth."

He frowned at me. "You're beyond the labyrinth, lady."

"How far beyond?"

The man shrugged. "Far past the western gate. What ails ye? It's not catchin'?" He drew back, eyeing me in the dim light.

I shook my head. "No. I was bitten and it made me sick."

"Come out of there." He held out his hand. I clasped it and let him haul me to my feet. I staggered once. He caught my arm and steadied me. "You look like hell, girl."

"Feel like it, too."

"Have you any place to go? How'd you come to be out here so late at night?"

How much should I reveal? I wished Qlea and Cadelio were with me, to help me find sympathetic Aleeatharans. "I've been away. I just returned. I'm unfamiliar with the new regime."

He snorted. "Away. Thought you'd be one of the lucky ones, aye? Didn't think the magic'd wear off, did ye now?"

"I didn't have a choice in the matter. I was sent away, whether I chose it or not. What do you mean, wear off?"

"The magic's bleeding through to the Above, suckin' 'em all back. Jareth's tipped the balance, and we've nothing but the myth of a vanished traitor queen to save us," the man said. He gestured toward the faint sparkle of light through the trees. "There's an inn outside the Grieving Forest. It's not much, but the keeper will give you shelter and food."

"I don't have any money."

The man shrugged and gripped the poles of his handcart. "No matter of mine, lady. I'll show ye the way, but I've no time for a burdensome one such as you."

I bristled at the insult, but realized after a moment he hadn't meant to offend me. "I can take care of myself."

He nodded towards the gruesome, infected wound on my shoulder. "You're doing a fine job of it, too. Come on, then, we've tracks to make before the windego come."

"The what?"

Facing away from me, he strained to pull the cart out of the rut. I lent what strength I had. It wasn't much, but between us, we got the cart on more solid ground. I offered to help him pull it but he cocked an eyebrow and shook his head. "You're useless in that state, lady."

We walked for a long time. I fell behind, but to his credit, the man slowed his pace. "Lady," he said quietly, after a long, long silence. "You should stand close to me now, for a bit."

"Why?" It didn't take a genius to hear the low, warning tone of his voice.

"We've a bit of company." I moved to his side, and he gestured for me to crouch in front of the wagon, between the long poles. He stepped away.

His hands began to glow, a warm yellow-green light that smelled of something like lilies and honey. An edgy hooting sound filled the night around us. I caught the faint scent of something rotten on the wind. The man's golden-green glow surrounded him. In the light, I saw him clearly. Though nowhere near as perfect as Jareth, he was an attractive guy. Square jaw, bright blue eyes, and unruly brown curls gave him a classically handsome appearance. The supernatural glow saturated his being until light poured from his skin.

"Come on, then," he spoke aloud, a challenge in his voice. "Show yourselves, beasties."

The forest around me erupted in howls and screeches. Dark forms flew out of the trees, figures simian and feline at once. Claws and teeth flashed in the magic light. The man drew a sword from the cart, the blade hissing out of the scabbard over my head. The light surrounding him spiraled around the sword and turned dark gold.

Who was this guy? I searched my scattered memories, seeking the one who would identify him. Something about him made me think I should know who he was.

The sword flashed and dark blood splashed through the light. The beasts began to scream again, this time in terror and pain as the man moved through their attacks like a dancer, graceful, deadly. He dispatched them swiftly.

When the last one fell beneath his sword, he stood still a moment longer. His eyes rolled back in his head as the glow faded. He wavered on his feet and dropped to his knees. I crawled closer. Before I could get to him, his eyes reopened, bright and alert, even though his hands had a noticeable tremor. He walked slowly, stiffly, as if afraid his knees would buckle.

"We've got to move quickly, I'm afraid," he said. "More of them will come soon."

He was so weak, he couldn't move the cart alone. I stepped outside the bracket of the handles and gripped one with my right hand. He nodded his thanks and took up the other side.

Between us, we managed to pull the heavy cart out of the woods. True to his word, a ramshackle, two-story building sprouted from the field, built halfway into a hill. Once this had been a small village. The remains of other structures stretched down the road a ways, though all that was left were blackened, burned timbers. The moon lit the scene with an eerie glow.

"Ye all right?" the man asked. I nodded.

"What town is this?"

He sighed. "_Was_ this, you mean? This fair village used to be Kenarva. Once upon a time, it was a beautiful little place. After the war…" He shook his head. Kenarva. I remembered Kenarva. Each spring, they held a beautiful little festival. Lots of flowers, food, music, and dancing late into the night.

I saw it then, in the wash of silver moonlight on his hair and the cat-like refraction of light deep in his eyes. Recognition shivered through me like a cold breeze.

"Torvan." The second the name slipped from my lips, his glamour dropped away.

He looked at me sharply, alarmed. One hand dropped to his sword. "How do you know that name?" His eyes narrowed and his entire body tensed.

"It's your name, isn't it?"

"No," he snarled. The sword was at my neck suddenly. With the cart at my back, I had nowhere to go. I tilted my chin up and pressed against the cart to make as much room between my neck and that blade as possible. "Torvan died when our bitch queen sold our souls for a bit of Draken cock."

Inwardly I flinched. I knew the man was Torvan—now that I recognized him, his identity was unmistakable. For one of my most loyal men to speak of me with such venom cut deeply. I bit back tears. I knew better than to expect an open-armed welcome, but I'd hoped those who knew me once upon a time would _know_ I wouldn't have handed Aleeathar over to our worst enemy so freely. I'd been betrayed.

_Excuses, excuses_, a tiny little voice whispered in my head. _Lust and the promise of something as fleeting and ridiculous as love made you compromise your entire existence._

I'd hurt the people who truly loved me, who loved me the most. They would never trust me, ever, no matter what I said or did even if I destroyed Jareth and restored Aleeathar's magical balance. Even if I succeeded, I would forever be the destroyer of all they held dear.

A sudden blaze of light blinded me. I threw my hands up to protect my face from the roiling ball of magic I half-glimpsed flying towards me. The power soaked me like cold water, cutting through the remains of my clinging glamour like soap through grease. Torvan exclaimed wordlessly and dodged back a step.

Revealed, all I could do was gaze at the former commander of my strongest army and await his wrath.

His upper lip curled in disgust as he took me in, in all my filthy, gory glory. The last glimmering remainder of the magic dissipated. Darkness broken only by the wan light of his lantern fell over us.

He spat in the dirt at my feet. "Should have let the damned beasties have ye!" His accent thickened with his anger. "What are ye back for? Haven't you done enough to us? You've no friends here any longer." He shook his head and continued to stare her down. "We had a chance, after that first battle. For a few precious hours, he was weak and we almost had him. Did you know that? We needed you. We had a _chance_. But you'd vanished like the cowardly bitch you are."

"That's not what happened," I said, huddling against the cart. I hated my weakness, the way I couldn't stop cowering and stand up to this former friend. Torvan paced away, slashing at the bushes overhanging the road. Several feet away, he turned toward me, sword outstretched like an accusing finger.

"You were _gone_. We went to rescue you, and you were gone. We lost the few good warriors we had left in that final battle. He punished us for your disappearance. We were tortured, some of us for years. For _you_. Sarah the Great."

Tears raged down my cheeks, hot and salty, stinging the poison-affected side of my face. He went on, cursing my name, until a little hot ball of fire, of a blessed, welcome anger, built up in my belly. I rose with a surprisingly grace, since my joints were swollen and feverish. "I came back to fix things."

He scoffed. "Fix things, aye? You believe it's that simple? You're a fool. You truly think you can _fix_ things?"

"I have to do something!"

"Go back to whatever hole in hell ye went to! We don't need the likes of you! We've…" He broke off and paced away. When he turned back, his lips were so pressed together so tightly they were white in the greenish light that his skin gave off. Anger still blazed in his eyes, shadowed with grief and regret, the rage in his voice quieted to a soft whisper. "We've given up, Sarah. There's nothing left to fight for. We watch our land crumble around us and all we can do is hide our tears from his scouts and spies."

"No," I replied. I had to brace myself against the nearest handle of the cart. My legs had gone weak suddenly. My knees trembled. Black spots danced at the edge of my vision. I took a deep breath and willed away the slowly-encroaching shadows. Try as I might, I couldn't force it back. "I didn't have a choice before. I have one now. I'm not leaving until I've destroyed Jareth."

Torvan stepped forward and flipped my hair off my infected shoulder with the blade of his sword. "You're infected. You'll be dead in a few days."

"Then I'll fight to my dying moment." I sounded stronger than I felt. The trembling in my knees crept upwards until it seemed my insides were in on the act. All the strength left me in a great rush and a dropped to my knees. If not for the luck of catching the hard length of the handle in my armpit, I would have slumped forward. Blackness swirled around me, thick and clotted and consuming. Light glimmered through the curdled shadows.

Time passed, whether a minute or an hour, I couldn't tell. The black cleared, revealing a rough-beamed ceiling overhead. Voices conversed softly, the owners out of sight. As my head cleared, I recognized Torvan's accented lilt and quiet, powerful tone.

I drifted off again.

The grate of cloth on my infected flesh tore a throaty cry from me. Though the cloth on my shoulder brought a blessed, welcome coolness, the pull of the fabric on my rough, cracked, scabby skin canceled out whatever comfort it should have brought.

"Stop, please," I croaked out. My throat hurt.

"She's far gone," the stranger said. A woman, I imagined. "Torvan, it's moving through her faster than the others."

"The others were ordinary. No threat to him. She's his _only_ threat." He moved into my field of vision. My right eyelid hung halfway closed, hard as stone. The rest of that side of my face and scalp, shoulder, arm and side, felt like a thin skin of mud. Every time I moved, cracks split open with sharp, hot streaks of pain.

"You have to make a decision, Torvan," the stranger said. "Soon she'll be at the point of no return."

Everything moved slowly, fuzzy-edged.

Fever dream.

I closed my eyes. I was lost in Jareth's gaze.

Not the Jareth who tortured me, but the Jareth who met me in the throne room in the light of the red candle.

I quit fighting and sank into the ever-narrowing spiral of light and dark, love and hate. Sickness and life. His hands held me down and drowned me in the darklight. Flickering red light filtered through the void and touched my soul. Jareth's gentle pleas for my attention, wordless yet urgent tugged me closer to the red circle.

I gave in and forgot, for just a moment, and stepped into the liquid-ruby circle.

I swam through ruby depths, alone, seeking reason and truth. I found fantasy and untruths that weren't lies.

Manipulations.

Omissions.

Half-told secrets, the remainders lodged artfully under tongues and in hearts. Haunted by these unrevelations, I floated to the surface and breathed in dense mud made from the fertile soil of Aleeathar and the heart's-blood of her people.

I choked on what remained of their trust when it hardened in my throat. Seeds sprouted tendrils that burrowed through my soul, rooting it firmly to Aleeathar's sick core.

I could never forget, not now. The roots thickened and held me fast to my promises, long forgotten.

Each promise I etched into the substance of Aleeathar. I touched each lost soul, and wrote the promises on their unbeating hearts.

One shaky lub-dub at a time, some hearts began to beat. One heart at a time, a gentle glow, red as rubies, red as blood, formed around the tangle of rotting remains, leathery roots, and my own diseased flesh.

_Jareth_.

The tangle of Aleeathar's remains converged and formed one familiar being. Tall and powerful, his eyes were gentle, laughing even.

My Jareth, the one I'd loved so much.

I saw the differences immediately. The softer light in his eyes, the laugh lines around his mouth. He was built as powerfully as his pseudo-twin, but there was a gentleness about his stance. _Find me_, he said, soundlessly. His voice rumbled around my heart like an earthquake.

I opened my mouth to ask where he was, and a root shot out, tearing through my throat and ripping out my tongue. Blood gushed forth and soaked my Jareth, staining him red. He continued to gaze at me with that mournful half-smile, his eyes alight with hope.

I kept bleeding until there was nothing left. My dried husk blew away on the breeze of his breath.

The cloth grated against my skin again, rubbing, tearing away my skin. I screamed—tried to scream—and twitched away from the torturous cloth.

"Sarah, open your eyes." Torvan's no-nonsense tone grounded me, freeing me from the last grasping hands of the dream.

Only my left eye obeyed. My right felt like a hard, dry stone in my skull. Even if I managed to get it open, I knew the sight was gone. I couldn't even see darkness. All sensation of sight was gone from that side of my head.

"We can slow down the progress of the poison. We can't cure it, but we know where you can find the cure."

"Where?" My voice sounded like steel on wood.

"You've got to do something for us if you want the cure."

I nodded. It hurt too much to talk.

"The poison that's killing you is killing us too. Instead of dying, though, we're changing. Our children are born deformed, changeling goblins replaced by his magic before they're even out of their mother's wombs. You said wanted to fix things and there's only one way you can."

I nodded again. _Tell me, tell me!_ I longed to scream. But it hurt too much.

"You've got to find the other Jareth and bring him back. He holds the key to destroying the demon that holds our country in thrall. He is powerful in his own right. We had him once, long ago, but he vanished into the human realm in search of you."

I knew what had happened. "He forgot."

"What?"

"It's what happened to me. I forgot everything." The red candle haunted me, a perpetual vision I held on to. "I spoke the death curse to kill Jareth…and myself—"

The stranger sighed. "Because of the duality of your souls, it only weakened the bonds that held divinity to mortality." Turning to look at her hurt too much, so I remained facing stony-eyed Torvan. "You cast out the Consort and the Vessel, and all that remains is this frail human stock." She stroked my arm. I wanted to scream from the agony her soft touch invoked. "The Vessel lies in eternal slumber beneath Jareth's black palace in the center of the labyrinth."

Torvan shushed her and commanded my attention. "Find him and bring him back. If he's forgotten, make him remember his promises."

"How? I can barely move."

Torvan looked across my body at the unseen stranger. "I'll take you to the spring. The water's effects won't last long, but you should have enough time to find him."

He scooped me up effortlessly. The bloody red shift I'd worn was gone, replaced by a thin one made of white fabric. He squired me from the room and carried me out into the moon-silvered fields. The stranger followed, still unseen by my eyes. Only the whisper of her feet through the high grass, the swish of her clothing, gave her away. Torvan remained silent, staring straight ahead as he walked.

The sound of gurgling water lay under the whisper of the night breeze and the constant hum of insects. Tall, stony hills towered over us, and Torvan wound his way through a maze of rocks and outcroppings until he stopped at the entrance to a dark cave. He nodded his head towards the darkness and a ball of green-yellow light appeared.

The path must have led into the very earth itself. We finally reached our destination. Like polished gunmetal, a deep spring glimmered, an eye twinkling in the gloom. Torvan's light spread, reaching the top of the cavern. Deep shadows slit the walls like wounds. The sound of gurgling water murmured to me like a lullaby.

My escort marched forward. "Hold your breath," he ordered. What he'd said barely registered before I plunged downward, and splashed into the water. Cold so intense it pierced straight to my core saturated me. I screamed, once I'd regained my senses. Water rushed down my throat. It burned up my nose and through my sinuses. Ears flooded, all I heard was a dull, echoing rush.

Unable to control myself, I sucked in another breath of water. My chest ached from the liquid invasion. I couldn't stop—I drew in another. Another. Another.

I was heavy. So heavy I stopped drifting upwards.

Another lungful.

I sank, deeper.

The water burned against my open eyes, burned away my vision of the present and the future. I looked into the past, and saw nothing but blood and smoke.

Death.

The souls screaming for vengeance against me. I saw the future, for a second, saw them take their revenge.

My body sank into the slick, silty mud at the bottom of the spring. The color of blood, it clung to my skin, a second skin, a layer between me and the rage of souls battering at mine. I lay in the silt, holding my chestful of water even though it _hurt_, and let the creeping warmth of death crawl through my limbs. Bubbles _blurp_-ed around me.

The dull sound of a splash rippled through the spring. A hand grabbed the top of my head, slipped off, grabbed my hair. Hauled me up, on to the rocks at the edge of the pool. Torvan's fingers tangled in my long hair and when he ruthlessly yanked himself free, the pain snapped me back to reality. I clasped a hand to the top of my head instinctively.

My right hand. The one that had been clamped against my ribs by my atrophied arm. My knuckles were still frozen in that claw-like half-grasp, and I couldn't extend my arm completely. I ran my other hand over the top of my forearm. Not long ago, it had been hardened, crusted over, cracked and scabby. Though it was far from healthy, the deepest of the painful fissures didn't hurt as much, and the shallow wounds had closed up.

"What happened?" I asked. My voice sounded normal, whole. No more grating. I touched my face. My fingers explored the smoother skin. My right eyelid still hung stiffly over my eyeball, but it wasn't as dead.

"The water is our most deeply guarded secret." Torvan closed his eyes, concentrating, and a glass bottle appeared on his upheld palm. The glass shimmered green-yellow briefly. It reminded me of the double-bubble shape of Pom juice bottles. He held it out to me. "Fill this up."

I knelt at the side of the spring and dipped the bottle beneath the surface. When it was full, he handed me a cork. I plugged it and waited for more instructions.

"The dousing only temporarily healed the worst of the poison's effects. It'll begin again, with a vengeance, in a few days. You're going to feel it from the inside out, this time around."

I turned the cool glass bottle around in my fingers. "That's what this is for."

He nodded. "To hold it off long enough for you to find him and get back here."

I sensed a truce between us, finally. "How do I find him?"

Torvan laughed, a hardened, cynical sound. "Couldn't tell you. We've searched for years on our own. He went for you, and vanished. When Jareth split, the dark half retained all of the magic. He has nothing to track."

"Cadelio and Qlea are still in the other Realm. They can help me."

Torvan's eyes narrowed. "They're the ones that convinced you to leave us."

I shook my head, refusing to believe it. "They wouldn't let me abandon Aleeathar. They didn't convince me to do anything. I don't remember anything that happened after I spoke the death curse."

"Then how do you know they didn't convince you to vanish into the ether?"

"Other than you, they were the closest to me."

Torvan regarded me with wary eyes, arms crossed over his broad chest. "You've got enough water to last ye a week, if ye ration it carefully. One sip every day. If you believe ye can help do the right thing, then so be it. But you've got a week, and if you're not back with him before that, you'll die a horrible death, and the infection will spread in the human realm."

"This?" I glanced down at my flawed skin.

"That. Jareth's blackness is already spreading through the Above. Things are changing in ways they aren't prepared to manage. We used to be guardians of the realms, but we've barely magic of our own. The human realm definitely hasn't the magic to protect them. It'll destroy them. I suggest you work quickly."

"How do I move between realms?"

"Same way you move between rooms. Find a door and open it."

"Okay, so where's the door?"

He groaned. "I'm beginning to believe perhaps you did forget everything." He pointed toward the entrance to the cave. "Use that one. One exit is another entrance. Ye make it so."

He tapped the pendant still hanging above my breasts. It flashed and warmed beneath his touch. "Ye don't have much left, but ye can make it there and back at least."

"I still don't understand how."

He grinned, a crooked grin that I remembered, and that triggered a flood of minor memories. Of sparring, talking, gossiping. Of a harried, passionate moment we shared after a particularly violent battle. Stained with blood of friend and enemy alike, we stopped just short of the point of no return. "It's just like breathing."


	9. Chapter 9

I paused a few feet from the low, narrow entrance to world outside the cool, echoing cave. Magic burned in the back of my throat and the pendant lay heavily on my chest.

"Will I forget?" Magic knotted my voice, desperate to overflow, to escape my mortal confines.

"Only for a moment. You've been here long enough to change. Time's wastin'. You need to go."

_Just like breathing._ I raised my left palm to my lips and puffed against my palm. Magic welled out, drizzling through my fingers like finely-flittering syrup. I breathed in the fragrance of cinnamon and shadow. The slow leak of magic swirled around my ankles. I pictured my cozy attic apartment on the other side of the cave entrance. Magic built low in my belly and pulsed through me, deep and gripping like the waves of an orgasm. The waves reached my chest and I pushed through the gummy barrier to the next realm.

I lost sensation in my entire body, yet I sensed myself falling, plummeting into a thick cup of indigo and black and silver threads. The colors wrapped around me like a thick blanket made of midnight.

For the briefest moment, I smelled vanilla and amber. Red light flickered, familiar red light. Soft and indistinct, I grasped that slice of eternity. My knees and palms connected with a hard stone floor. The impact jarred my entire body. I bit my tongue and blood flooded my mouth. Even with my lips shut, blood squeezed out of the tiny gap created by the unnatural grimace of my right cheek.

I knew where I was.

I rose, joints aching arthritically. _Come to me,_ I whispered into the velvety ether that hovered just above my skin, just out of reach, yet deeply ingrained in my flesh.

Seconds passed, each one a tiny chip of infinity. Then I sensed his presence, the warm taste of his magic on my tongue, the scent of amber and musk in my nose. Revelation smashed into my mind.

_He _called me here.

Not Jareth.

I didn't know his name, and I sensed the differences that separated him from the dark Jareth. His hands closed around my waist. "How?" he asked, his lips warm against my ear.

"We need you. How do I find you?"

He stiffened and drew back, though he didn't break contact. "I can't."

"He's killing Aleeathar."

"They despise you. Why do you care? You've found freedom. Find me, and we'll live our lives without the burdens of rule."

"I can't let them die. They loved me once."

He kissed my neck, hard and possessive. I gasped from the sharp little pain. He'd marked me, as his twin had, but much less devastatingly. "I love you now."

I twisted in his grasp and threw my arms around his neck. I held him tight, savoring the differences that separated him from his vile twin. "Tell me your name."

"I can't. It's against the rules."

"What rules?"

"The rules that govern this place. You can never look on my face here, as I can never see yours. We are shades of ourselves, just shadows that have been separated from substance. Here, the rules of physical existence don't exist as they should."

I pressed my lips to his warm neck. Magic tugged at my back. His hands tightened. "No," he murmured. "Stay with me."

"I'll find you, and we'll stay together."

We dissolved, condensed breath into cold air. I closed my ethereal eyes and let the currents of magic carry me where they would.

Because there, in that land of lavender skies and blue grasses, I was queen. The mural on the wall across from my bed, hidden behind layers of thoughts and memories scribbled on scraps of paper, illustrated by vivid, consuming dreams.

I was a warrior queen. I wore armor that fit like a second skin, made of the scales of dragons I'd slain myself. I wore the stains of my enemies' blood on my clothing. I tasted it on my lips as I roared into battle like a demon.

I was feared. Admired. Loved.

_Loved._

He loved me. He of the stormcloud-slate eyes, the wry grin, the cocky attitude. Broad-shouldered and well-built, he could use the same hands he'd used to rip an foe's throat out to bring me to absolute rapture.

The jarring bark of the alarm clock shattered the cool stillness of my apartment, shattered the pixilated remnants of the sweet dreams. With a groan, I slapped the 'off' button.

Mrs. Harkness rapped on the thin wooden door. More like a grandmother than a landlady, I kept the door unlocked. She swung it open and poked her head in. "Rise and shine—Holy shit!"

The tray she had in her hands clattered to the hardwood floor. The food on the tray splattered everywhere. Hot tea splashed her legs.

About the same time the last sounds of her exclamation left her lips, searing pain shot through the right side of my chest and face, burning beneath my skin until I cried out and clasped my left hand to my cheek. My right arm lay against my ribs, locked there by stiffness and pain.

"What happened, Sarah?" Mrs. Harkness cried, dashing to my side. Like a mirage, I saw through her hunched, aging body and glimpsed a thin, young woman. Something pressed against the back of my throat, urging me to cough.

I caught a glimpse of my left forearm.

_Your name is Sarah._ In smaller letters underneath, words in unfamiliar handwriting urged me to say it aloud.

I looked up at Mrs. Harkness just as she reached the bed.

"_Sarah," _I said aloud. The name left my lips in a rush of magic strong enough to blow the old woman backwards a few steps. The papers on the wall ruffled, then tore from their tape and thumbtacks to blast around the room like hurricane-blown debris. "Sarah," I said again, forming the sounds slowly, carefully, reveling in the hot rush of magic through my body. Something formed in my clenched right hand, pushing knotted, cramping fingers apart.

"_The water will slow the effects of the poison somewhat. It'll buy you enough time to find him."_

Torvan, warning me. Helping me.

Mrs. Harkness dissolved, her old flesh fading. Clea remained on the floor. "Sarah?" she whispered, her eyes bright and wide with something like fear. "Are you…here?"

I grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand. The date, the time…the magic had whisked me back to the morning before my seizure, the morning before I _remembered._

"Clea, get Cadelio here. We have to find him."

"Who? What? Zade, what happened? Do you _remember_?"

"Everything. I was there, Clea." I got up, nearly stumbling when my upper right thigh cramped, and staggered to the dresser. I yanked open a drawer and snatched out a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans. I knew I couldn't manage a bra, so I didn't ever try. I got dressed as best I could, accepting help from cold-fingered little Clea when my right arm wouldn't cooperate. "I was in Aleeathar. Dark Jareth is killing the entire kingdom. I've got to find his shade and take him back, because he's Aleeathar's only hope."

"No part of Jareth can save Aleeathar," Clea said, brow troubled. "His line has been the bane of our existence for generations."

"You don't understand. When I spoke the curse I split them, and myself too. I separated the Consort from Jareth's—" I couldn't figure out the right word. I fluttered my hands up and down, gesturing to my body. "And the Vessel from myself. I've got to put everything back together or Aleeather doesn't stand a chance." I pulled my hair over my left shoulder. "You can help me or not."

I stuck my feet into a pair of sneakers. As Clea tied them for me, and snagged my bag off the top of the dressed. I hung it crossways from shoulder to hip. I needed to search for Jareth's shade, and the only way I could do that would be to use magic. The house had a weird feeling, like some sort of shield surrounded the house. It was probably one of Clea's glamours. I headed outside with Clea hot on my heels. In the front yard I paused near one of the many, jewel-toned gazing balls.

This one wasn't just a tacky yard ornament. I dropped to my knees and placed my palm on the smooth surface. Instantly, the surface clouded and warmed to my touch. Magic swirled over the curves like static electricity, tingling my skin and soothing the sharp ache of damaged flesh. I breathed in and out, savoring the sensation of rejuvenating magic. Power eddied through my skin, sweet and comforting. I laughed, and the essence of the universe filled my lungs. I lifted my face to the sky and let the natural energies of the human realm, perpetually untouchable by its inhabitants, soak into me. The bauble hanging against my sternum warmed and thrummed. I could make out a bright blue-white glow at the lower edges of my vision.

Deep, deep inside my heart, I heard the goddess murmuring in her sleep. I wanted to weep with joy. She and I were still connected, however tenuously. I wanted to ask her what I need to do, how I could save her—and save myself—but words wouldn't come and I could only close my eyes and listen to her whisper to her lover, her Consort, her eternal companion.

I listened closely. Though she whispered to him, the Consort wasn't with her. Her distress grew with every moment of silence. In the black void of nothingness that formed her prison, she remained alone and blind, bound by my curse. She slept, forever captive to a nightmare tyrant. My heart broke for her. Tears ran hot down my cheeks. I had all but locked her in her sepulcher with my selfishness. I let myself forget about her, about myself, about Aleeathar. She would never forgive me and I didn't blame her one bit.

She _sensed_ me, even in her sleep. Anger roiled around her like storm clouds. Vicious promises raged on the currents of time and magic, each a dagger to my heart.

The Consort walked the human realm. I had to take him back to her. Perhaps even when I reunited them, she wouldn't pardon me, but I had to try. The tenebrous connection the goddess and I maintained haunted me with her lingering loneliness. Perhaps, when they were reunited, her madness would subside and the unintelligible curses she murmured into existence would vanish.

My grip on the gazing ball tightened. Despair threatened to drag me down into that black place with the goddess.

_Where is he?_

I shoved through my dense clouds of depression and self-loathing. My demons floated up from the ether and taunted me. I pushed on, seeking the red light, the scent of vanilla and amber, cinnamon and shadows.


End file.
